DeBlasio on Mayoral Control

Bill De Blasio underscores some of our points about mayoral control in this morning's NY Sun: "Data from a survey I distributed at the town hall showed that 80% of parents did not know how or where to voice their concerns about the school system. Parents also expressed concerns about transparency and accountability — 76% of the surveys called for easier access to more information. We must listen to these concerns and use them to inform school policy."

And De Blasio also highlights some of the highly publicized snafus by the DOE, fumbles that indicate that all isn't as the mayor would like us to believe over at Tweed: "We all recall DOE's ill-conceived move to change school bus routes in the middle of winter without notifying the community; the one-dimensional school report cards that confused parents and provided little insight into the actual successes and failures of individual schools; and, this summer, the centralization of pre-k admissions, which took information away from parents and split families between different schools. Opening up the lines of communication and listening to the voices of the affected families may have prevented each of these problems."

Perhaps so, but at least it would have been a start. Now isn't the time to embrace the kind of Papal infallibility that the Daily News is trying to sell. Power is, of course, corrupting; and there's no better municipal example of this axiom than the educational governance system.