Farina retires
Carmen Farina retired as School Chancellor in New York City, after a 40 year stint at the NYC schools. She was pulled out of retirement, where she was making $206,000 per year from the city retirement fund. Her new salary as Chancellor was $227,000, making her total income $433,000 a year.
If she lives an average lifespan of women, she will collect over $200,000 a year for 20 years. That’s over $4 million total income. Since she worked 40 years, and she made $100,000 a year in retirement benefits, in addition to her salary. This brings her salary as a principal to over $230,000 a year, including benefits. (And we are not even including health benefits – including free health and dental care for life, for her and her husband or partner — and summers off. These benefits are never taken into account when NYC teachers – and other government employees — talk about how underpaid they are.
Thank you New York taxpayers. Thank you suckers.
Farina’s main educational philosophy was influenced by the black and Hispanic con. She believed in classroom inclusion and neurotic racial equality – that is, equality of outcomes of all races, regardless of equality of talent and work. African American and Hispanic students should get the same grades as Asian, Jewish, and European-Americans, regardless of how much work they do or how much they obey the rules of the school.
Farina was against special education programs – where students with special needs are put in separate classes, with teachers and programs trained to educate these students. She was committed to put students not able to do the standard work and the dysfunctional students into classes with those students who did their homework, who had the talent to do the work, who worked hard, and who obeyed by rules. It was irrelevant to Farina if the talented and hard-working students got a good education or not.
Students getting the best education possible (and the best bang for the buck for taxpayers) wasn’t the goal under Farina. Inclusion and racial equality was. Hard working students who obeyed the rules could safely be ignored. Their parents just paid for the schools.
Farina was adamantly opposed to Charter Schools, which consistently produce better results and have more student and parent satisfaction than regular public schools.
One argument against Charter schools was that the best students were pulled out of the public schools. Students who didn’t work hard and didn’t obey the rules didn’t bother to apply the Charter schools and, if they did, soon left the schools. Most of these Charter Schools were majority minority students.
These policies were advocated because of the taboo of seeing a higher percentage of minority students in Special Ed than white and Asian students. This was seen as the cardinal sin of America – racism.
Farina was living the Progressive dream: pursuing (neurotic) racial equality and becoming a multi-millionaire in the process. Thank-you taxpayers.
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We can never really know ones motives especially if they are the ones in power. I never looked and analyzed our education system on this point.
I think there’s a thin line of wanting to get equality but having greater inequality along the process. Maybe Farina doesn’t understand the underlying effect of her policies on the education system
Rachel,
Good point!
My main idea is what is the goal? Equality or good education?
Farina, and DeBlasio,seem to have the priority on equality. You hit a point on the unintended consequences of pursuing equality — inequality! For example, the worse the classrooms get with the integration of dysfunctional kids with functional kids, the more the parents move the serious students into private and charter schools, creating more inequality.
I think we can both agree that it is a complex problem. But nothing we can’t figure out….right?
RG
I agree, RG! It is indeed a complex problem but we can always look at the bigger picture to find out what’s more important.
I think the main goal should be good education
Couldn’t agree more!
What a scam Farina is. I wonder how she can sleep at night. She is truly robbing our kids of a great opportunity. Betsy Devos should kick her out.
I totally agree! How can she decide on this system knowing that it’s limiting the children options and you’re right–opportunities.
No wonder kids get a remedial education between k-12 in the USA. I’m glad that Trump brought on Betsy who is a strong proponent of charter schools. LET THE MARKET DECIDE WHATS BEST FOR OUR KIDS…..NOT THE GOVERNMENT.
Jeff,
Basically I agree with you. We should choose the system which educates our kids the best — which should be obvious, shouldn’t it? Not to have as our major goal job protection and high benefits for the teachers and administrators (unless this, in fact, does result in the best education for the students.)
But let’s not forget, free-enterprise isn’t the answer to everything. Just a peek into our health system should give us a clear view into this reality — once your can look past the fog of the big-business propaganda: “We have the best health care system in the world.”
Tx for your comment,
RG