...the more they don't.

I'll say a little prayer (to,I guess, the ghost of Madelyn Murray O'Hare) that a different muse is speaking to Mayor dB re. SCHOOLS CHANCELLOR.

The status quo in ED ( Bloombergism) is a catastrophe and completely untenable. But there will be pressure ( *some* of it well intended) not to simply turn back the clock to A.D. 2000.

We need a visionary. A *real* visionary; not a poseur like Duncan or an idiot like Cathie Black. Or a creeeeeeepster like Joel Klein.


Ooooohhhh! Joel Klein! I said it. I feel unclean. Get me soap, get me water.

And, by the way, Ghouliani [sic] gets way too much credit for the drop in crime -- crime dropped all over the US in those years, and dropped by more in cities with policies completely opposite to the Ghoul's than it did here. Rudi exploited a drop in crime much more than he caused it.

A couple of bright spots from a Reuters article:

. . . But Giuliani and Bratton clashed frequently, and the commissioner resigned in 1996.

Starting in 2002, as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, Bratton worked with both an inspector general and a federal monitor, instituted in the wake of a bruising late-1990s corruption scandal. . . .

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/05/us-usa-newyork-police-bratton-idUSBRE9B40PJ20131205

COMPSTAT, he was Bratton's Dep. commr. who designed the program to systematically cut crime using statistics and prediction.

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/

Crime rates dropped dramatically all over the country starting in the early nineties. But not all states had the same programs. At the link above, pretty much any state you pick will show dramatic decreases in crime from 1992 on. (One exception seems to be Arizona.) Why did crime go down? There are a variety of hypotheses, but it would be hard to show that any one local program was completely "responsible", particularly since rates dropped just as much in other states with very different programs.

I would love to see a more systematic study, if anyone knows of one. But so far, I think no one has really shown one definitive reason for the drop.

Last edited Thu Dec 5, 2013, 08:57 PM - Edit history (1)

... understand how public schools actually work from *personal* experience.

In other words a PROFESSIONAL person.

Bloomberg turned the NYC system into the Original Amateur Hour. After 12 years, we've got a catastrophe on our hands as a result.

Education is way to important to turn it over to profiteers and know-nothings .