There is an increasing concern among educators that Chancellor Carmen Farina is not up to the demands of heading the New York City school system. Her lackluster, unfocused, and dare say, incompetent leadership has many talented educators frustrated with her disappointing performance as Chancellor. Worse, she has kept on many of the Bloomberg era personnel who retain their critical policy making positions in the DOE that has made teaching in the classroom a hostile experience and damages the students trying to learn in them.
What's unfortunate, is that Chancellor Carmen Farina, unlike the Bloomberg era chancellors, enjoys unlimited freedom in changing the dysfunctional DOE as the new Mayor allowed her to implement policies that would improve the schools. Instead, she has continued many of the destructive Bloomberg policies including the largest class sizes in the State, freezing the already inadequate school budgets, and continuing the badly flawed teacher hiring and retention policies that hurt student academic achievement.
The pity is that Chancellor Carmen Farina, unlike the last four chancellors, is a long term educator and should have been more receptive to positive changes in the classroom. However, the reality is that Carmen Farina had bought in to Michael Bloomberg's education reform, rising to Deputy Chancellor before being pushed out by Joel Klein in a power struggle and is part of the problem and not the solution in making the classroom environment a more welcoming place to teach and learn in.
To me, Chancellor Carmen Farina is becoming more like the incompetent Chancellor Cathie Black, with her verbal gaffes such as her "its a beautiful day"comment among others. More importantly, the very people who were hoping for real change for the better for the New York City school system and were delighted with the new Mayor's education policy, instead were rapidly losing confidence with the seemingly incompetent Chancellor and her failure to improve the New York City schools. Maybe its time for Carmen Farina to retire for good and get a competent Chancellor to transform the New York City schools for the better.