Nothing became Nadelstern in the DoE as his leaving it

Were he an idiot, his passing would not merit mention. But he was a real educator. Smart. Clever. Rumor made him a good principal, but that was ages ago. And he used his experience – not to help the system, but to tear it down.

His mass-produced mini-disaster schools (or rather, Nadelstern failure academies) captured Gates money for his cronies, while accelerating a downward spiral in the high schools in the Bronx. His role in structuring and restructuring and Empowering bureaucracy (while disempowering parents and educators and whole communities) allowed him to advance his own career by pushing around and punishing those who had the audacity to be poor or to teach those who were poor.

He knew what his subordinates did not – he knew that the progress reports were garbage, that quality review was disruptive, that shutting and reopening schools was destabilizing without benefit. He knew that he was doing harm, and he did it anyway.

He knew how to advance. He worked his way up through an old boy’s network, and stayed out of the line of fire as his contemporaries were reorganized out of jobs. He lined Diana Lam’s husband with a job he was unqualified for, and ducked for cover when the investigation hit. He took little steps, bit by bit. Each reorganization, nonsensical to the rest of us, brought him closer and closer to where he really wanted to…

I hate Bloomberg. But he brought a smile to my little face as he butchered Nadelstern’s name, when he announced that Cathie Black would be promoted over him, and then when he announced that Nadelstern’s deputy would be also promoted over him.

Why oh why, I wondered, why wait until June to leave?

And now we have the answer. The shame of PS8 is done pissing all over the system that educated him and gave him his start. Good riddance!