ABSTRACT
In 2003, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a wealthy businessman, moved the Department of Education from Brooklyn to Tweed Hall in Manhattan, where his new Chancellor, Joel Klein, also a noneducator, created all the trappings of the new business model. Rather than bureaucrats in cubicles and offi ces in the old Board of Education at 110 Livingston Street (which Bloomberg referred to as “the Kremlin”), Tweed Hall had adopted a transparent look with entrepreneurial young noneducators sitting around conference tables in large domed halls. Th is performance of openness and accessibility lacks authenticity if you consider the school system was gutted of community participation and budget oversight. Diane Ravitch, whose main ire against Bloomberg and Klein was their choice of a balanced literacy program instead of a phonics program, takes them to task for their antidemocratic approach to reform. According to Ravitch (2005),
In the reorganization, the central Board of Education was replaced by a powerless panel that serves at the pleasure of the mayor. Without an independent lay board, the Department of Education is free to allocate its budget without public oversight or transparency. Previously, no-bid contracts were rare, seldom amounting to more than $1 million per year, and were reviewed in public meetings. In the past two years, the Department of Education has awarded over 100 no-bid contracts for over $100 million with no public review. (p. 15)
Even the “powerless panel” snubbed the mayor and chancellor by boycotting their lobbying trip to Albany, accompanying the union instead (Herszenhorn, 2006).
