Here’s hoping Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg brings her “Ban bossy” campaign to New York. Maybe she can get Mayor Bill de Blasio to find a healthier response to Eva Moskowitz, and to end his war on charter schools and the children whose lives have been ever changed by them.
“Ban bossy” strikes a chord with many strong women, whose willingness to lead, push back, argue and challenge — all good, strong adjectives in life for men — are often misconstrued as bossy, pushy and worse.
And Moskowitz is a strong, aggressive, successful and independent former city councilwoman-turned-school founder — the epitome of the women Sandberg celebrates. Her Success Academies have saved thousands of children from the city’s failing schools and contributed to the entire state’s educational progress.
“Ideologues will sacrifice anything to ideology,” notes columnist Peggy Noonan. “Even children.” Yet de Blasio’s ideological fixation with an antiquated and failing school system doesn’t fully explain his protection of the status quo.
Consider his unconventional background. His mother, author Maria de Blasio, was one of only two Italian-Americans to graduate from Smith College in 1938. Born Warren Wilhelm, the future mayor changed his name to hers, demonstrating this well-educated independent woman’s influence on her son.
And she also made a choice in his schooling — enrolling him in a lottery (much like kids looking to enter charters today) that would win him a coveted slot in the alternative Pilot School in Cambridge, Mass. How can he be so dogmatic in opposing the very same kind of education that helped him grow up to be mayor and so deny hope to New York children today?
Was Maria “bossy” or just aggressive in pursuing the best for her son, something thousands of mothers who are doing the same today will be denied if de Blasio has his way in acting against some of the city’s highest-performing schools?
Where reasonable opponents might try to negotiate, argue or democratically enact new laws to get his way, de Blasio simply canceled school without any reasoned evaluation. That rightly earns him the title of “bully.”
The mayor had a choice: Boldly follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Mike Bloomberg, making it more likely New York’s kids could get a quality education. Or curry favor with other bullies from the teachers union and unravel the most important element of Bloomberg’s success — parental choice.
Oddly, President Barack Obama (another son of a strong woman) similarly just sought to zero out funding for the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program — which (like charters) gives poor children access to schools they couldn’t otherwise attend.
The president and his team insist that their priority is the 90 percent of children who attend public schools, despite the fact that children with scholarships actually learn more in their schools of choice.
Learning, not schooling, is the point of educational dollars to begin with. That bad schools can exist and be funded regardless of their efficacy for kids is insane, and yet this was the modus operandi that prevailed for decades, until the education-reform movement arrived and turned a nation’s thinking about education on its head.
Indeed, education excellence is now a reality for families thanks to 6,400 charter schools nationwide, serving more than 2.5 million students, and to the myriad school-choice programs in which children in need have received scholarships. But a bully’s arrogance often prevents him from seeing the truth.
With my amateur-psychologist hat on, I wonder: If society were not so harsh to women who speak up and speak out, perhaps their offspring wouldn’t feel compelled to act like bullies over people who have so little power.
Single moms — like those who raised de Blasio and Obama — have made great choices for their children for centuries. They’ve probably had to be aggressive and assertive — not bossy — to get results.
Our leaders should do what it takes to support other such women — and men — who’ve struggled to raise their children and for whom education is their great equalizer. Perhaps it’s time Sheryl Sandberg paid them a visit.
Jeanne Allen is senior fellow and president emeritus of the Center for Education Reform, which she founded in 1993.