Suffer Little Children

Mattingly Leaves ACS,

Presided Over Tragedies

But Reformed the Agency.

Judge Richter Is Successor.

John B. Mattingly is retiring as Commissioner of the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) after seven years in the trenches. At the age of 66, he will return to the child welfare foundation he headed in Baltimore.

His departure is in striking contrast to Jay Walder's jumping ship after 21 months at the MTA to take a far more lucrative position running a railroad in the Orient. Yet Walder may have performed a service by his surprise exit. His manner had alienated many of the people he had to deal with, and the financial chasm between receipts and expenditures had only widened, although through no fault of Walder's.

John Mattingly stayed for the long haul in what is probably the most thankless position in city government. You get into the news only when a child under your protection is murdered, usually by the mother's boyfriend, or when the child starves to death after months or years of neglect and abuse. The more grotesque the death, the more attention it receives in the media, and the more people are shocked by the tragedy, which can often be traced to the negligence or incompetence of employees of the Administration for Children's Services.

The nadir in this agency came five and one half years ago, when the police found the lifeless and emaciated body of Nixzmary Brown in an apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant. We reported on the case on January 13, 2006, and you can read our analysis of the situation by clicking here. We reproduce the headline over the story.

TORTURE AND MURDER OF A 7-YEAR OLD GIRL
LIVING WITH FAMILY UNDER ACS SUPERVISION
LEADS TO DEMANDS FOR FULL INVESTIGATION
AND REVIEW OF ACS' FAMILY-FIRST ATTITUDE.

With additional information, we wrote another article five days later, which you can read here. By January 18, similar horror stories were coming to light. This was the headline on the second article:

OBSERVATIONS ON THE DEATH OF AN AMIABLE CHILD,
TORTURED BY ADULTS AND IGNORED BY AUTHORITIES.

The reference to an amiable child is from the caption on a small statue in Riverside Park, just west of Grant's Tomb, which commemorates the life of St. Claire Pollock, a young boy who, on July 15, 1797, fell to his death from the edge of a cliff overlooking the Hudson River. We feel sadness over the centuries at the loss of an innocent child. When the tragedy is caused in part by official misconduct, people feel anger as well as sorrow.

A roster of murdered children appeared in a third story, which was published on January 23. Compare the unusual, hopeful names their mothers gave them with their sordid and pitiful deaths. Click here to read the article headlined:

SIERRA, DAHQUAY, JOZIAH, NIXZMARY;
FOUR CHILDREN DIE IN FOUR MONTHS
WHILE UNDER THE CARE OF CITY ACS.

That column, which is almost lyrical in tone, begins with the poem, "Who killed Cock Robin". It continues with a contemporary version of the children's rhyme. I strongly recommend that you read it; you will not be disappointed.

AFTER THE TRAGEDIES

With the support of Mayor Bloomberg, Commissioner Mattingly survived these disasters and went on to institute numerous reforms in the beleaguered agency. More caseworkers were hired, and their training improved. Supervision was increased, and supervisors were held responsible for their employees' misconduct. Child welfare advocates, generally critical of public agencies, gave Mattingly good marks on the whole upon his departure.

However, since no one can entirely believe the words of public officials, (look, for example, at the hosannahs which exalted Joel I. Klein upon his departure from the Department of Education to enter the service of Rupert Murdoch) we cannot say for certain what, if any, skeletons remain in the closet at ACS.

We commend Commissioner Mattingly for his service and dedication over seven long and arduous years. Mayor Bloomberg was courageous for not yielding to those demanding Mattingly's immediate dismissal after the tragedies.

We have just learned that the mayor has appointed Ronald E. Richter, a Family Court judge, to succeed Mattingly. Richter was formerly a Deputy Commissioner at ACS, in charge of Family Court cases involving child abuse, neglect and custodial rights. He is married to Franklin Cogliano, and they have a 14-month daughter, Maya.

Mayor Bloomberg said that the Commissioner's sexual preference had no relevance to his appointment.

Black Thursday

Mayor Fires Chancellor Black

After 97 'Unsatisfactory' Days

We were surprised today to learn that Mayor Bloomberg dismissed his hand-picked Schools Chancellor, Cathie Black, after 97 infelicitous days as chief of New York City's school system. The mayor did not set a speed record, however, in dismissing a commissioner who did not work out.

That distinction falls to Mayor Edward I. Koch, who took just 74 days to fire Robert J. Milano, whom Koch had appointed Deputy Mayor for Economic Development at the start of his first term in 1978. Milano died in February 2000, and Koch said today that they parted ways because Milano wanted to expand his agency and Koch wanted to shrink it.

Ms. Black was never able to counter the wave of negative judgments that followed her appointment by Mayor Bloomberg on November 9, 2010, a scant hour after the departure of Joel I. Klein, who had set a record for length of service. Klein was chancellor for more than eight years, Bloomberg having appointed him on July 29, 2002. Ms. Black also set a record, for brevity of service.

In general, Mayor Bloomberg has been praised for the quality of his appointments to high city positions. He has a Committee on Appointments, led by the highly respected former Deputy Mayor (under Koch), Nat Leventhal. The Black selection was out of character and did not follow the normal pattern of vetting potential candidates. It is suspected that the mayor was more than willing to dispense with the services of Chancellor Klein, whose luster had been dimmed by Federal statistics indicating that the academic achievement of New York City students was not as great as Mr. Klein had led New Yorkers, including perhaps the mayor, to believe.

The beleaguered mayor deserves some credit for firing Ms. Black before she became a further embarrassment. He showed that he could dismiss his own appointees, even if that leads to the conclusion that he made an error in hiring them in the first place. It should also be pointed out that although this is the tenth year of his mayoralty, it is the first time that such an inappropriate appointment was made, and he corrected it on his own.

We were highly skeptical of the Black appointment from the start, and wrote about it twice. On November 10, we wrote, under the headline KLEIN OUT, BLACK IN. DOES SHE KNOW HOW TO TEACH THE 3R'S?:

"One would imagine that if one were seeking to fill the most important school superintendency in the United States, some person could be found who was both a brilliant manager and had some experience in public or private education. The appointment was not required to have been announced within minutes of the news of Joel Klein's resignation to enter the field of publishing."

On November 12, under the headline, UNWEIGHTED BY EXPERIENCE, CATHIE BLACK SEEKS WAIVER. WILL MAYOR'S WISH PREVAIL?, we wrote:

"No truly independent screening panel of educators is likely to conclude that no experience whatsoever in their professional field is adequate preparation for the most difficult and complex job in local public education. If they felt that way, they would be expressing the view that their own professional qualifications had little value, and that any corporate executive could fill the positions they now hold...

"It could be said that the chancellor, a person whose importance is comparable to that of the police commissioner, should be a person of impeccable and undisputed credentials, a Horace Mann of the 21st century, if such a person could be found and persuaded to take the job. To select a chancellor with no background whatsoever in education is certainly a daring leap of faith."

The leap of faith has not led to a happy landing, and the plug has pitilessly been pulled on the publisher. President Kennedy and thousands of others have said that public service is the highest calling, if it is done wisely and well. If it is not, one finds another person to serve. The republic will endure. So will Ms. Black.

The task now falls on Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott. We have known him for many years, and we like and respect him. This will be the most challenging task he could possibly attempt. We hope he succeeds.

One piece of advice for Mr. Walcott: Call Diane Ravitch and Sol Stern. You don't have to do everything they say, but you should listen to them carefully. They can tell you a lot about the system for which you are now responsible. They are not bound by the mistakes of the past, and neither should you be. There are over a million children out there for whom you should be a great hope. Do everything you can not to let them down.

Will Steiner Waver?

Unweighted by Experience,

Cathie Black Seeks Waiver.

Will Mayor's Wish Prevail?

The prospect for the granting of a waiver to Cathie Black so she can serve as New York City's school chancellor may have dimmed a bit in the last two days.

For one thing, the New York Times reported today, in an article by Winnie Hu, that the man who will decide whether to grant the waiver, State Education Commissioner David M. Steiner, "will convene a screening panel consisting of representatives of the State Education Department and educational organizations to make a recommendation to Dr. Steiner." The commissioner's spokesman "would not speculate on how long that would take."

For another, two of Chancellor Joel Klein's deputies have announced their resignations, and others are expected to leave as well. One reason cited in favor of Ms. Black was that the Klein management team would be available to assist her as she familiarized herself with the educational universe.

No truly independent screening panel of educators is likely to conclude that no experience whatsoever in their professional field is adequate preparation for the most difficult and complex job in local public education. If they felt that way, they would be expressing the view that their own professional qualifications had little value, and that any corporate executive could fill the positions they now hold.

This does not mean that Ms. Black will not receive the necessary waiver. The Commissioner and his screening panel may be responsive to the wishes of a higher authority. Mayor Bloomberg wants the waiver, and carloads of movers and shakers will be influenced by his wishes. There is a strong argument that, since the law provides for mayoral control, and the first element of control is selecting the head of the enterprise, this appointment is his call, regardless of whom he may choose, assuming that the nominee is literate and not a felon.

There are also many people who believe that some schools are ungovernable, and some children uneducable, and that giving the mayor a free ride on the chancellorship would make it easier to fix the blame on him if a less than satisfactory outcome results.

Mayor Bloomberg has previously shown his distaste for technical, legal standards. When Patricia Lancaster resigned as Commissioner of Buildings in 2008, the law required that the Commissioner of the department be an architect or engineer. The mayor's choice, Deputy Commissioner Robert LiMandri, was neither. He solved that problem by having the City Council pass a local law repealing the requirement. Mr. LiMandri is now the Commissioner and he is well regarded.

Since the news from the Buildings Department is usually limited to collapsing cranes or bribe-taking employees, it is certainly arguable that his real estate background is as valuable as one in architecture would be. One may still wonder: is there not one architect or engineer in the City of New York who would also do a first-rate job of overseeing the Department of Buildings? The answer to that question depends on how wide one casts the net.

The Schools Chancellor's position is one that is a target for year-round assault by various groups. The politically correct term for them is "stakeholders"; the pejorative description, "special interests". Public officials begin with a modest reserve of good will, which is depleted over time as group after group is dissatisfied because their particular demands are not being met.

Ambitious politicians boast about their concern for education; photographs of children decorate their mailers. Some of these friends of education, however, do not go so far as actually voting for additional funds, or giving the Chancellor the power to manage the system.

In view of these hazards and obstacles, it could be said that the Chancellor, an official whose importance is comparable to that of the police commissioner, should be a person of impeccable and undisputed credentials, a Horace Mann of the 21st century, if such a person could be found and persuaded to take the job. To select a chancellor with no background whatsoever in education is certainly a daring leap of faith.

It is true that Mayor Bloomberg himself, a successful business executive, had no experience in government before he was first elected mayor in 2001. Since he has basically been a good mayor (he was re-elected twice, has generally appointed and removed commissioners on the merits, has run a scandal-free administration, and innovated in public health and environmental issues), it is understandable for him to believe that others who have achieved great success in business can use their talents to succeed in the public sector.

A perennial problem in the field of education is credentialism. Schools for teachers award degrees routinely, and school boards may require those degrees as qualifications for being hired. It is too often the case that possession of a degree has little relationship to ability to teach in a classroom. But even those who reject credentialism may support minimal standards for people who hold important positions in educational administration. Credentials may not have intrinsic value, but they do provide a veneer of protection for the qualified and unqualified alike.

The Mayor weighed in on the controversy this afternoon, as Simon McCormack of The Huffington Post reports. The headline: BLOOMBERG DEFENDS AGAINST CATHIE BLACK CRITICISM, by Simon McCormack. In response to the critics of his choice, the Mayor said, "It just goes to show they have no understanding whatsoever of what the job is. This is a management job."

These troubling questions remain: How will the proposed chancellor, skilled as she may be, decide on priorities, programs, personnel and budget allocations without personal expertise and knowledge of the basic subject matter she will oversee? How many of the expert professional team said to have been assembled will stay? What will she do if the experts disagree? On what basis will she make critical choices?

Will the members of the screening committee exercise independent judgment? Will the Mayor's wishes be dispositive? Does Speaker Sheldon Silver, a friend and patron of Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the state Board of Regents, have a discreet opinion on the matter?

The elusive qualities of managerial judgment and the ability to lead and inspire may be present in Cathie Black. If she gets the waiver, she will have the opportunity to demonstrate them. But will her skills be sufficient to improve educational outcomes for over a million children?

But Can She Teach?

Klein Out, Black In.

Does She Know How

To Teach the 3 R's?



Mayor Bloomberg has appointed a new Schools Chancellor to take the place of Joel Klein, who resigned suddenly after eight years to take a senior position with News Corporation, where he will work for Rupert Murdoch. The new Chancellor, subject to approval by the State Education Commissioner, is Cathie Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines.

Ms. Black has no experience in educating children, but in today's world there is some doubt as to whether that is a liability, an asset, or irrelevant. One would imagine that if one were seeking to fill the most important school superintendency in the United States, some person could be found who was both a brilliant manager and had some experience in public or private education. The appointment was not required to have been announced within minutes of the news of Joel Klein's resignation to enter the field of publishing.

The new Chancellor will take office in the old Tweed courthouse, at 52 Chambers Street, where Mayor Bloomberg moved the staff of the Department of Education prior to selling its castle at 110 Livingston Street, which is now a condominium.

She can fill her staff with professionals, with degrees and technical qualifications, but how will she know which ones to believe? She has an extremely difficult task to perform, and we certainly wish that she is able to do it well. The bottom line here, however, will no longer be corporate profits, but children educated and prepared to succeed in the competitive world we are experiencing today.

Perhaps, with the current state of knowledge, no one has a clear picture of how to teach children to read and write the way their parents learned. In that case, Ms. Black will be an interesting diversion. It will take up to a year for her to learn her way around, but her managerial skills have been demonstrated in the private sector, and she should be a quick study as she settles down in Tweed.

Her success will depend on the strength, competence and different views of the people around her. We will watch carefully as she makes her choices. One thing that is clear is that there is mayoral control of the schools, at least at the top. Ms. Black does not come from a political club, but neither does she come from a schoolhouse. She is a high flyer in the executive suite, and her success is amplified by her gender and the bias she may have had to overcome.

What we will learn in the next years is whether her managerial abilities are transferable from the boardroom to the classroom. If they are, so much the better. But it is also possible that her personal skills, great as they probably are, may be unable to transform a system with over a million pupils, well over a hundred thousand teachers, and many more thousands of other employees.

The problem may not be in management systems or employee development. They just might not be prescribing the best way to teach. Schools of education are known not to attract the best students. Often what they learn is psycho-babble, with a heavy dose of political correctness and laced with deconstructionism. For one person to have a significant impact on a confused and divided culture would require great strength, character and judgment. It would also help to know something about education.

Mayor Bloomberg is likely to be de facto Chancellor, just as Mayor Giuliani was his own Police Commissioner, no matter who held the title. Bloomberg has made history by appointing the first woman chancellor, just as President Clinton appointed the first woman secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, and President Bush the younger appointed the first black man, Colin Powell, and the first black woman, Condoleezza Rice. Did these precedent-shattering selections bring about world peace? Well, they didn't bring about war, except when the President wanted it, in which case it began. The point is that symbols, striking as they may be, often do not affect the course of history. So it is likely to be in this case.

If I were State Education Commissioner David Steiner, I would spend time talking to Cathie Black and exploring her attitude and rationale for taking the job. Twenty-seven years ago one of Steiner's predecessors, Gordon Ambach, blundered badly by rejecting a waiver for Robert F. Wagner, Jr., the ablest public servant of his generation. Whether he made that decision because Mayor Koch had previously called him "pigheaded" on another issue, or whether he was channeling the Executive Chamber, has never been determined.

Waivers were granted by another Commissioner, Richard Mills, however, for Harold Levy (named by the Board of Education over Mayor Giuliani's strong objections) and Joel Klein (named by Mayor Bloomberg). It is likely that the mayor has already secured consent for Ms. Black's waiver, but if not, her membership in the corporate, managerial and financial elite should squelch any doubters. Also, there is no real evidence that anyone with paper credentials in education would be any better at dealing with the enormous challenges that Ms. Black is likely to face.

We do not denigrate her; she must have been good to achieve the success she has enjoyed. General Eisenhower had no civilian experience, and he turned out to be a reasonably good President. The job she faces is in some ways more difficult than his; so far, despite the press releases and selective statistics, no one really knows how to do it. Good luck, Ms. Black. You will need it.





StarQuest #717 11.10.2010 919 words