Banks Scores Another ‘F’
Schools Chancellor David Banks went to Hillcrest HS on Monday to address the antisemitic student riot a week ago — but aimed mainly at downplaying it. “Violence, hate and disorder have no place in our schools,” he said, without calling out the rank antisemitism of targeting a Jewish teacher simply for choosing a pro-Israel Facebook profile picture.
He faulted TikTok and other social media for flooding students with depictions of “children and young people in Palestine being blown up”: The kids “feel a kindred spirit with the folks of the Palestinian community. This is a very visceral and emotional issue for them.” So we’ve gone from “the dog ate my homework” to “TikTok made me riot”?
This is the most damning sign yet that Banks has surrendered to the bureaucracy.
Yes, he came into the job with a solid vision: Back in December 2021, he called it “outrageous” and a “betrayal” for an “agency that has a $38 billion annual budget” to “have 65% of black and brown children who never achieve proficiency.” Yet the budget’s basically the same now, and so is the proficiency picture.
We applaud his move to phonics-based literacy instruction, but that’s looking like an exception to a grim rule.
He vowed to shake up the Department of Education’s moribund bureaucracy; instead he’s left it largely intact, not even firing the hacks hired under the last mayor.
Nor did he reverse the de Blasio-era war on quality schools: He left it up to district superintendents to restore competitiveexam entry into elite middle schools, and uttered not a peep when most of them ducked.
He didn’t even undo the disastrous de Blasio lottery system for high-school admissions, another disaster driving the middle class to flee the public schools.
And he’s playing along with the dumbingdown of state testing, which will likely let those Hillcrest kids graduate knowing little beyond what they “learned” on TikTok.
We still hope for improvement, but the best grades this chancellor has earned so far on any front is “incomplete.”