Back in the day, Harry Cohn, notorious chief of Columbia Pictures, had a foolproof way to judging a film’s merit: “If my fanny squirms, it’s bad. If my fanny doesn’t squirm, it’s good. It’s as simple as that.” To which Herman Mankiewicz responded, “Imagine, the whole world wired to Harry Cohn’s ass!”
Carmen Fariña, New York City Mayor de Blasio’s pick for chancellor of the city’s school system, appears to possess a similar decision-making apparatus, according to the New York Times. Shown a data spreadsheet intended for use in evaluating school performance, Carmen responded “I know a good quality school when I’m in the building. We’re going to do this, based on the schools we know to be good.” So, we don’t need no lousy stinkin’ data!
Afterwords
Under Michael Bloomberg and his school chancellors, Joel Klein and Dennis Walcott, the city’s high school graduation rate rose from 46.5 in 2005 to 68 percent in 2014. Four years from now, we’ll see how Carmen’s ass is working.
