Carranza’s Sick Corona Plans

‘Never waste a good crisis to transform a school system.” Those were Chancellor Richard Carranza’s words in a virtual roundtable with Latino leaders last month. While the city mourns fallen teachers and other school staff, he’s eager to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to push his “racial equity” agenda.

By transformation, he means eviscerating academic standards since in his mind they simply enshrine white (and Asian) privilege.

That’s why he’s pushed to downgrade standardized tests and kill Gifted & Talented programs. Now many parents fear he’ll use this crisis, which has eliminated most letter grades and year-end testing, to kill competitive admissions for selective middle and high schools.

Carranza has such disdain for top student performers that on a recent call with Community Education Council members he spoke of “so-called high achievers.”

Rather than create more good public schools, he prefers to dismantle the few good choices available to parents of all classes and incomes.

Instead of focusing on literacy and numeracy, this chancellor prefers to go to war against academic standards as though the messenger were the enemy.

Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of the Success Academy charter school network, recently wrote the families of her mostly black and Hispanic student body to explain why she won’t abandon grading like her district colleagues: “True equity honors the integrity of learning.”

Carranza’s “equity” is nothing but resentment. He needs to go.