February 12, 2007 2:28PM # NYC Parents Need Actual Power By [Neal McCluskey](https://www.cato.org/people/neal-mccluskey) --- SHARE Probably only because it involved “privatizing” education, on Saturday the *New York Times* ran [an editorial](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/opinion/10sat4.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) criticizing the Bloomberg administration, and new deputy schools chancellor Chris Cerf, because Cerf failed to quickly and fully disclose that until very recently he held stock in for-profit Edison Schools. Lamented the *Times*: > Mr. Cerf should have provided this relevant public information. It may seem like a small matter, but it adds to the perception of many parents that they are not being taken seriously, despite the creation of parent groups in every school. “Perception”!? It’s a cold, hard fact that parents aren’t being taken seriously, and that’s because they have no serious power. Until they can take their children – and the money attached to them – out of the public school system, no public school or bureaucrat has any reason to take them seriously. Unfortunately, the *Times* seems to think that the solution to the problem is just for education officials to spruce the “we care what parents think” window dressing up a bit, not empower parents to leave a system that all too often holds them in contempt. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).