Thursday, September 3, 2009

The Vanishing Bottom


No, this post isn't about the results of the latest episode of Dance Your Ass Off. (Personally, I preferred Pants Off Dance Off, but that's another story.)

Jack Welch, former CEO of GE and man on top at the Leadership Academy, famously called for the firing of the bottom 10% of any organization in a given year. Presumably, that would include the principals he helped 'train', and if he could have managed it, 10% of city teachers every year. Klein and Bloomberg embraced that philosophy for quite some time. They've been pushing to close the bottom schools. Quite a few schools actually got closed, resulting in the ATR mess. But now something has happened that has put a crimp in the best laid Machiavellian plans of Welch, Klein, and Bloomberg.

There is no longer a bottom 10%.

Only two schools in all of NYC received an F on their report cards. This isn't ten per cent, or even one percent. It is .1%.

To show how ridiculous all this is, there are 10 schools in NYC that have been labeled persistently dangerous by the state education department. A number of these schools received As on their report cards. Apparently, they're great at reading, rioting, and 'rithmetic.

BloomKlein, who have long worshipped at the altar of Data, have finally succeeded in making it absolutely meaningless.

3 comments:

NYC Educator said...

Kids get a better education at persistently dangerous schools. It really prepares them for the real world.

Pogue said...

"Okay, class, let's all open our switchblades and get to work."

Anonymous said...

I read Welch's blasted book and his heartlessness is boundless, though he couches it in a verbal style that makes him sound like a "plain folks" regular guy. His position is that 10 percent of the workers need to be harvested ( professionally decapitated)even when their immediate bosses can identify nothing wrong with the quality of their work.