It’s time to end Albany’s destructive micromanagement of NYC schools

A year after being tasked with studying the effectiveness of mayoral control of New York City’s public-school system, the State Education Department delivered a 300-page report undermining it — and so leaving no one accountable for school-system failure.

Plus, SED’s $250,000 study calls for setting up a commission to look for more ways to mess things up.

The Legislature’s leaders rejected Gov. Hochul’s push to renew mayoral control in negotiations for the state budget, when she has maximum leverage to resist watering it down, as they did two years ago by reducing how much of the Panel for Educational Policy Adams appoints.

Here’s hoping Gov. Kathy Hochul doesn’t cave in budget talks
And they clearly hope to undermine it some more this year — because they’re in the pocket of the teachers unions, which strongly prefer a system prone to behind-the-scenes manipulation, like the old Board of Education.

Note that it’s the Legislature (mainly Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie) that chooses the state Board of Regents, who govern SED: So, in sniping at mayoral control, SED simply did what its masters wanted.

Notably, the report mainly cites the input of “activist” parents who mainly parrot city United Federation of Teachers talking points.

When city parents rallied to retain Gifted & Talented programs and protect high-performing schools, the UFT and its pawns worked to undermine them.

The SED report is just another play in the sordid Albany game of rewarding special interests while spreading out the blame so voters can’t hold anyone accountable — in this case, to impose that same dark design on the city Department of Education.

Taxpayers, parents and students be damned.

Kudos to Assembly Education Committee Chairman Michael Benedetto (D-Bronx) for opposing this drive, saying, “We should keep what we have and hold someone accountable and that would be the mayor.”

Every other school system in the state has a settled system of governance; only New York City is subjected to this periodic micromanagement (mismanagement, actually) from Albany.

This obscene, venal farce must end: Mayoral control should be made permanent.

https://nypost.com/2024/04/10/opinion/end-albanys-destructive-micromanagement-of-nyc-schools/

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Education Eclipsed: Unnecessary School Closures Breed Anxious Children

A total eclipse crossed the country this week in a display of natural wonder. Rather than seize the opportunity for an engaging science lesson, hundreds of school districts with several hundred thousand students decided to close for the day, many citing safety concerns that students might accidentally look at the eclipse without proper eye protection.

Even worse than failing to teach students about science, the decision to close schools for the eclipse teaches students to have irrational fears about their safety. If we want to understand why young people are experiencing alarming levels of anxiety and having difficulty developing into capable adults, all we have to do is look at examples like the excess cautiousness exhibited by schools regarding the eclipse.

To put in perspective how irrational it is for schools to close during the eclipse out of safety concerns, let’s review how incredibly unlikely it is that the eclipse would harm anyone. It is true that people should wear protective eyeglasses when looking directly at the sun during an eclipse. But the instances in which people stare at the sun without protection and cause permanent and serious damage to their eyes are so rare that they almost round down to zero.

In 1999, a total solar eclipse crossed the southern part of England, a country with 99 million people. An article in the British Journal of Medicine reports that a total of 14 people experienced any eye injuries from that event, and those were mostly minor and temporary.

In fact, an earlier study of an eclipse in Turkey found that the handful of injuries were so ephemeral that only “10% of those with damage had permanent visual loss to the extent that they were not able to read a car number [license] plate at 25 yards.”

The only serious injury documented from the England eclipse occurred after someone “looked at the sun for around 20 minutes without protection.”

If schools were unable to distribute the protective eyewear that was widely available and avoid having students stare at the sun without that protection for 20 minutes, they would be so lacking in behavioral control that they should be permanently closed, rather than just close for that day.

It’s worth noting that students could also damage their eyes if they stab them repeatedly with pencils. Presumably, schools have sufficient behavioral control to avoid closing over concerns about pencil-induced blindness.

Despite the fact that the threat posed by the eclipse to student health is about as remote as that posed by pencils, hundreds of school districts across the country decided to close for safety reasons.

In Arkansas alone, 104 school districts with 163,954 students, or about 35% of all students in the state, closed for the eclipse. In the state of New York, more than 200 school districts closed. In Ohio, the number of school districts that closed also exceeded 100, including schools in Cleveland, the state’s second-most populous city. Another 100 school districts closed in Texas, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Even in Louisiana, which was not in the path of the total eclipse, there were still school districts that closed, “with many citing safety concerns.”

People sometimes say, “You can’t be too careful,” but the truth is you can be. Excessive cautiousness promotes a fragility among young people that hinders their ability to develop as capable adults. As both Jonathan Haidt and Abigail Shrier have documented in their recent books, crippling fear of the broader world is making it less likely that young people physically gather and socialize, driving them into dangerously isolated and distorted virtual lives.

Excessive anxiety is making it less likely for young people to get driver’s licenses, less likely to date, and ultimately less likely to form new families with their own children.

We can’t lay blame for all of this on the decision of more than 500 school districts this week to close for the eclipse. But we can see these closures as an indication of how public schools are failing our children by modeling excessive and irrational concerns about safety. It’s this same excessive and irrational caution that led so many schools to close for long stretches of the COVID-19 pandemic, with disastrous consequences for both academic and social development.

During both the eclipse and COVID-19, public schools made decisions for the convenience of the adults who work in them without concern for their students or families. Handing out protective eyewear, walking outside to look at the eclipse, and having to remind students to be sure to use the glasses can seem like a hassle to unmotivated teachers and administrators. They similarly hate going on field trips to visit historical sites or cultural institutions. As they see it, things could only go wrong if they leave the safe confines of the classroom.

But most families do not want their children raised by schools surrounded by virtual bubble wrap. They want their children to develop into capable and independent adults.

If we want to prevent the next generation from becoming paralyzed with anxiety and irrational concerns for safety, we need to shift power from excessively cautious and unmotivated public schools to parents. When parents can choose their schools, they will find those that balance safety and exploration in a way that suits the needs of their own children and not those of the adults who work in schools.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/10/education-eclipsed-unnecessary-school-closures-breed-anxious-children/

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Ohio college students fear for safety, launch system to alert crime off campus

Students at the University of Cincinnati have banded together to create the Cincy Crime Stoppers Instagram page to alert students about incidents around campus.

A description for the Cincy Crime Stoppers says the page is for "Bearcats who live off-campus and have been a victim of a crime" to "send in anonymous tips to help keep" the "community safe."

"We're a group of student[s] … who have all been victims of different things while we're students at UC," said Hailey Smith, a criminal justice student in her junior year and representative for the page. "We noticed that there needed to be some sort of outlet for students to be more aware of what's happening around the campus."

Smith added that the students who created the page — who have fallen victim to various crimes from armed robberies to break-ins, felt a need for more alerts about crime near campus. Cincy Crime Stoppers aims to do that by sending real-time alerts to followers.

A description for the Cincy Crime Stoppers page says it is for "Bearcats who live off-campus and have been a victim of a crime" to "send in anonymous tips to help keep" the "community safe." (Michael Hickey)

"Cars on our street get broken into at least a couple times every month," Smith said.

The UC junior is passionate about crime prevention and reduction and hopes the Cincy Crime Stoppers page has a positive impact on the community, even on a small scale. She and other students feel the university can be "vague" in crime alerts sent out to students.

Cincy Crime Stoppers aims to not only give students more information about crime near campus but also help law enforcement get more tips.

University of Cincinnati students have launched a crime alert page called Cincy Crime Stoppers. (Instagram)

"We want to get confirmed information before we send it out, of course, and we also want to put out … the most important stuff, but also this stuff that … is unreported by UC," she said.

Most recently, students are mourning the death of Benjamin Addison, a 21-year-old UC student who was fatally shot in the early morning hours of March 30 while he was trying to stop a car theft. Police named a 17-year-old suspect in connection with Addison's death.

Addison's father said in a Facebook post that two people were trying to break into the 21-year-old's Hyundai. Prosecutors are asking for the teen suspect's case to be transferred to adult court while the suspect's attorney is pushing for his release, according to FOX 19 Cincinnati.

"He was the light of my life and truly my best friend. He was such an amazing young man and I [don't] know if I will ever get over this pain. Please pray for me and my family," Joe Addison wrote.

UC has not released any kind of public statement acknowledging Addison's death, and Smith said students feel as if they've been left in the dark. The university did not immediately respond to an inquiry from Fox News Digital.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/ohio-college-students-fear-safety-launch-system-alert-crime-off-campus

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