52 Pickup

The Sunday Times' article on yet another DOE reorganization: The usual media puff piece for the suits that run Tweed-but there were a few jibes towards the end. "Skeptics say that the administration is wasting time and money on the consultants and that the mayor, a businessman, and the chancellor, a lawyer, remain fixated on systems and structure, rather than the interactions inside classrooms."Isn't it insane to play 52-pickup another time when structure is far less important, far less consequential, than the daily dealings between teachers and students?" asked Diane Ravitch, the education historian and frequent critic of the administration. Noting that the city's four-year high school graduation rate of about 53 percent had barely budged during Mr. Bloomberg's tenure, Ms. Ravitch added: "It is hard to see why this number will increase as the result of yet another massive upheaval in the structure of governance." And Randi Weingarten, the president of the city teachers' union, said: "Joel and all his management guru types never talk to anyone who actually does the work — that's what so mind-boggling. Our mission isn't constantly trying to reinvent ourselves into an entrepreneurial model that will get golden globes at the Harvard Business School. How do we help all 1.1 million kids get a decent high school education?" BTW that's Sir Michael Barber on the left, Tony Blair's adviser called in to help-as if we didn't have enough of these yutzes of our own.