Tag: Michael Bloomberg


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Four Burning Questions in School Reform: It Starts with (Cathie) Black


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Just because it’s Thanksgiving week doesn’t mean there aren’t points to ponder: What is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s next step in getting support for making Cathleen Black chancellor…

Photo courtesy of Fallbrook Bonsall Village News

Just because it’s Thanksgiving week doesn’t mean there aren’t points to ponder:

  1. What is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s next step in getting support for making Cathleen Black chancellor of New York City’s schools? Based on what some speculate, some folks (namely New York State Education Commissioner David Steiner, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and New York AFT boss Michael Mulgrew) want a more-education industry-versed person (essentially, a member of the educational status quo) to serve as Black’s co-pilot in overseeing the city’s Department of Education. Will Bloomberg play ball or pick one of outgoing Chancellor Joel Klein’s former deputies (notably Chris Cerf) and dare his opponents in a game of political chicken.
  2. Will incoming House Education and Labor Committee Chairman John Kline actually attempt an investigation (or show trial, depending on where one sits) of the Obama administration’s handling of federal stimulus funds — including Race to the Top money? Will he help back an effort by Utah’s Jason Chaffetz — who may take over one of the House subcommittees overseeing the District of Columbia — to revive the now-shuttered D.C. Opportunity voucher plan? The answer may be “no” to both.
  3. When will the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers admit that defined-benefit pensions and other parts of traditional teacher compensation are no longer worth defending? That answer may come in the next few years as the pension deficits of their affiliates finally start hitting the bottom lines. Or they end up like the NEA’s Indiana affiliate and go bust altogether.
  4. Will Detroit and Indianapolis — home to two of the nation’s most-persistent dropout factories — be among the latest cities to have their districts be taken over by state education departments. Indiana’s education czar, Tony Bennett, has already fired his shot across the bow of Indianapolis Public Schools (which has  seven of 21 schools — including the notorious Manual High — under probation for five consecutive years) and other districts. Eduspiel speculated on what would happen to Detroit Public Schools earlier this year. Either way, both can’t end up like Philadelphia — whose five-year Promoting Power rate declined from 74 percent for the Class of 2001 to 64 percent for the Class of 2009 since Pennsylvania state officials took over the district nine years ago.

By the Way: The State of Black CT Alliance — which helped successfully push for the Nutmeg State’s Parent Trigger law — is hosting its first annual Building Blocks of Educational Excellence Campaign Dinner and Awards Ceremony. Congressman Chaka Fattah, Education Trust President Katie Haycock and yours truly will be speaking at the Dec. 16th event in Stamford, Conn., and will talk about to reform American public education and  Learn more (and buy your tickets) at the State of Black CT Alliance’s Web site.

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A Considerable Legacy: Joel Klein


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Joel Klein wasn’t exactly the natural choice for chancellor of New York City’s gargantuan and stupendously dysfunctional traditional public school system when he got the job in 2002. After all,…

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Joel Klein wasn’t exactly the natural choice for chancellor of New York City’s gargantuan and stupendously dysfunctional traditional public school system when he got the job in 2002. After all, the former U.S. Assistant Attorney General was better-known for his successful antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s than for any forays into education. As it turned out, the school district — which was taken over by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as one of the first major efforts to place school systems under mayoral control — needed someone who wasn’t fully ensconced in the  stale status quo of the traditional education establishment to set it on a course for the better.

Eight years later, as Klein steps down as head of the nation’s largest traditional public school system, one can say he has changed the district’s once-infamous culture of mediocrity, byzantine bureaucracy and shockingly banal corruption. Graduation rates for the district (based on eighth-grade enrollment) have increased from 56 percent for the Class of 2002 to 63 percent for the Class of 2008, according to Dropout Nation‘s analysis of federal and New York City data. Student achievement levels have progressed steadily even as New York State has revised its own state tests for greater rigor.  The district is still a work in progress; the city’s abysmally low graduation rates for black males (and the New York Post‘s report about the travails of Wayne Knowland (who graduated from Fannie Lou Hamer High School despite his functional illiteracy) shows that there is still more work to be done. But the city is still doing better for its kids than it did nearly a decade ago.

Meanwhile New York City has become the pioneer for concepts that are (sadly) still considered innovative for education. Its development of the ARIS system has given teachers and administrators a tool that can be used for identifying potential dropouts, improving instruction and fostering long-term connections between teachers and their students. The shutdown of the city’s worst dropout factories and their replacement with smaller high schools with new cultures and more-dynamic staff has also shown an alternative to the rather faulty model of school turnaround efforts being advocated by the Obama administration. And Klein’s relentless pursuit of teacher quality reform — including efforts to use student test data in evaluating newly-hired teachers (and keeping laggards from gaining near-lifetime employment through tenure), and the attempt last month to publicly release Value-Added performance data has helped galvanize school reformers and others around dealing with one of the most-crucial steps in stemming the nation’s dropout crisis.

But Klein’s tenure isn’t just notable for its results. It offers some lessons to school reformers everywhere: You can successfully overhaul a traditional school system — and take numerous tough steps — and still be amiable to allies and critics. Traditional districts can be top-notch authorizers of high-quality charter schools — and even play significant roles in fostering their development (and giving families escape hatches from the worst traditional public education offers). And he has proven that education should not be left to teachers, principals and traditional players alone. We will not revolutionize American public education until we create dynamic cultures that embrace the genius within all of our children.

Cathleen Black, who succeeds Klein as chancellor, will have to do as good a job as he has. She has no choice but to succeed. Our kids need her to follow upon Klein’s stellar work revamping the Big Apple’s school system.

Watch this Dropout Nation excerpt of Klein’s speech earlier this year about turning around New York City’s high schools


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The Future of Mayor-Led Reform


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Sometimes, it’s about the man leading the reform, not about reform itself. Judging by Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty’s troubled re-election campaign alone, one would dare say that mayor-led school…

Sometimes, it’s about the man leading the reform, not about reform itself.

Judging by Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty’s troubled re-election campaign alone, one would dare say that mayor-led school reform — including mayoral control of traditional school systems and other mayor-led reforms — is just a bad idea. Same would also be true if one looks at the fall of another municipal paragon of school reform, Bart Peterson, whose acclaim as the first mayor to authorize charter schools didn’t insulate him from losing his job as Indianapolis mayor three years ago.

Such thinking would be understandable. After all, mayors face more than enough threats to their long-term futures in politics — reforming city governments alone (much less just running them) leads to gaining entrenched enemies — without wading into the even-more treacherous landscape of public education. Once a mayor attempts to either take over a failing district, he or she is naturally rallying school board members, locals of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, superintendents and others; they may generally loathe one another, but they have greater enmity toward supposed interlopers invading their coteries. If the mayor succeeds in taking control, he now has a powerful rival in the form of NEA and AFT locals, who have the resources and ground games to whip up a frenzy among their supporters. All this before the mayor actually gets to the job of reforming schools.

Meanwhile, the average citizen — often still stuck in the old paradigm that education isn’t a city government concern — is still unsure of whether mayors should be in the education business. Even of the mayor does a great job on reforming schools, he must also get the other aspects of city government right: For many, keeping streets clean, cutting down crime, cutting taxes and improving quality of life are far greater concerns than education.

But one really judge the worthiness of mayoral control just on Fenty’s problems or Peterson’s fate. The former is in trouble because of his lack of appealing demeanor, stumbles in managing other aspects of city government, and missteps in handling Chocolate City’s race-based politics. Fenty is paying more for blunders such as canceling a meeting with the late Dorothy Height (a paragon of the civil rights movement) over one of his controversial moves as he is for challenging D.C.’S educational Ancien Regime.

Peterson’s strong efforts on school reform were not matched with equal effort on tackling the Circle City’s rising crime, improving quality of life in less-tony areas, and, as seen with his support of the now-completed Lucas Oil Stadium for the Indianapolis Colts, being fiscally prudent with taxpayer money. Citizens saw him as a complacent failure and showed him the door.

Mayors must still be as successful in improving the rest of city government as they are in school reform. That’s just the way it is. Residents aren’t just going to praise the mayor for fixing schools — especially if they are failing in other areas. This means mayors must be at skilled at managing goverment and keeping their supporters behind them; whether or not they launch school reforms, their jobs would still be the most-complicated in American politics.

The successes of New York City’s Michael Bloomberg, Richard Daley’s tenure in Chicago and John Norquist’s school voucher efforts in Milwaukee are better examples of how mayors can lead school reforms; their remaining challenges are also better examples of why the reform of American public education can’t just start or end at the central offices of school districts or one-off programs — and why the traditional school district model is no longer worth sustaining.

More importantly, as seen in efforts by the mayors of Rochester and Milwaukee to take control of the local district, the continuing saga in L.A. over Antonio Villaraigosa’s effort to nudge L.A. Unified toward reform (an effort first undertaken by predecssor Richard Riordan), and the problems of low educational achievement in  Hammond, Ind., Alexandria, Va., and elsewhere, mayors can no longer ignore the critical links between the long-term efforts of keeping middle-class residents and commercial activity in their cities and improving education. They must embrace school reform because so many of the issues with which they must wrangle are connected to it. Mayor-led reform is critical, not only in sustaining school reform, but in keeping cities thriving. No mayor wants to preside over Detroit-like despair.

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The Dropout Nation Podcast: School Reform As the Cornerstone of Community Renewal


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On this Dropout Nation Podcast, I take a look at one community and explain how education reform can help foster community renewal. Contrary to the arguments of defenders of traditional…

Dropout Nation Podcast CoverOn this Dropout Nation Podcast, I take a look at one community and explain how education reform can help foster community renewal. Contrary to the arguments of defenders of traditional public education, school reform is critical to addressing other community needs and ultimately building the middle class needed to improve neighborhoods.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod or MP3 player. Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network and Zune Marketplace.

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Read: Monday Morning Champions Edition


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What’s happening in the dropout nation that doesn’t involve pigskin: In New York, Randi Weingarten’s successor as head of the American Federation of Teachers’ New York City local is using…

If only if this was the Redskins instead of the Jets. Photo courtesy of ESPN.

What’s happening in the dropout nation that doesn’t involve pigskin:

  1. In New York, Randi Weingarten’s successor as head of the American Federation of Teachers’ New York City local is using the language of Gary Orfield and Richard Kahlenberg in his opposition to the lifting of New York State’s charter school cap. In the Daily News , United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew declares that “charter schools are actually becoming a separate and unequal branch of public education”, citing the low levels of ELL students in some charters. Could it be that the parents of these students, mostly immigrants themselves, don’t have the sophistication or access to information about charters to make a different choice than send their kids to traditional public schools? Or could it be that, like parents of special ed students, ELL parents tend to think that traditional public schools can handle those children better than charters, even though the evidence of this is sparse (and often, would lean against that conclusion)? Mulgrew doesn’t ponder either of these matters. But certainly he wouldn’t. Mulgrew isn’t thinking about equality or integration. Or even about the kids under the care of his rank-and-file.  He’s thinking about the best interests of his union.
  2. Meanwhile in Albany, the notoriously dysfunctional state legislature is looking to strip the State University of New York of its power to authorize charters, according to Cara Matthews. This is the price Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (and his ally, the AFT’s New York State affiliate, which opposes charters altogether) hope to extract in exchange for lifting the cap on charters. As you would expect, Gov. David Paterson and charter school advocates oppose this exercise in school reform futility. This isn’t exactly New York’s Race to the Top.
  3. Even worse, as the New York Times , the New York City Department of Education, one of the most-aggressive charter authorizers, would also lose the authorizing role under the plan. Apparently, Silver and the AFT’s New York State local wants to make sure that either New York State is out of Race to the Top or that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his schools chief, Joel Klein, lose as much as possible under the plan. Although I am generally against allowing school districts to have authorizing power (mostly because they tend to never use it and keep out charters), New York City has been the exception and should keep the authorizing ability. As usual, this is typical teachers union/Sheldon Silver politics. Neither are worthy of respect.
  4. Meanwhile Paterson proposes to give SUNY and the City University of New York freedom from state budgeting, reports the Press & Sun-Bulletin. This includes allowing the universities to raise tuition without legislative approval. As I’ve noted in a 2008 Hechinger Institute report, such freedom tends to not work out well for college affordability or for expanding access to higher ed among poor students.
  5. As for higher ed, InsideHigherEd reports that public funding for state universities is on a “historic” decline. Now this depends on what you mean by decline. As their chart notes, higher ed funding has still increased by more than 19 percent (and a 29 percent increase, if you add federal stimulus funds into the equation). Cry me a river.
  6. San Diego Union-Tribune writer Dean Calbreath looks at the recent Alliance for Excellent Education, EdWeek and Bureau of Labor Statistics data and concludes that dropping out equals fewer job opportunities.
  7. The L.A. Times opines about the Matthew Kim teacher termination saga and concludes that the entire system of teacher hiring and compensation needs an overhaul.
  8. Speaking of teacher compensation: Battles over teachers pensions and retirement benefits are starting to heat up. Vermont is the battleground this time around. The NEA’s Vermont affiliate is already on the warpath.
  9. John Fensterwald reports on the growing opposition to Common Core Standards, especially among mathematicians. This battling over the value of a national curriculum — some would say it already exists — is going to be an undercurrent in the battle over the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.
  10. Entrepreneur Sramana Mitra takes a look at how technology can be deployed to improve education.
  11. EducationNews‘ Michael Shaughnessy interviews Anthony Rao, who looks at how schools teach boys and girls and how it may contribute to the former’s achievement gap issues.
  12. Jay Mathews thinks the Brookings Institution’s recent study on education news coverage overstates the problem of mainstream reporting on ed news.
  13. Don’t forget to check out this week’s Dropout Nation podcast. The commentary focuses on the need to improve leadership throughout school districts. Sure, teachers unions are part of the problem. But leadership at the district and school levels are also the reasons why so many school districts are in academic and bureaucratic freefall.
  14. And given this is Martin Luther King day (and courtesy of Eduflack), don’t forget to listen to the famed ” Have a Dream” speech today. And remember, when it comes to education, we are far away from fulfilling either the dream and even further from the Promised Land. But we will get there soon.

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Read: Weekend Watch Edition


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What’s happening in the dropout nation: – The Foundry takes aim at the opposition among some D.C. politicos to reviving the soon-to-be-shuttered D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Harry Jaffe of the…

More opportunities to learn. Photo of St. Anthony Catholic School, Washington, DC

More opportunities to learn. Photo of St. Anthony Catholic School, Washington, DC

What’s happening in the dropout nation:

The Foundry takes aim at the opposition among some D.C. politicos to reviving the soon-to-be-shuttered D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Harry Jaffe of the Washington Examiner offered his own thoughts — and gave one of the District’s city councilmen the business earlier this week. Jaffe thinks vouchers “will get funded for another five-year program.”

– Meanwhile, in The Catholic World Report, I take a look at one of the key alternatives to D.C. Public Schools: The Archdiocese of Washington’s Catholic schools. Two years after Archbishop Donald Wuerhl decided to spin off several of its financially-lagging schools and convert them into charters, the proverbial Mother Church is working hard to ensure educational opportunities for its poorest families while fostering additional funding and support from the flock.

– One of the three School Reform Andys (Rotherham, in this case) and Education News Colorado take aim at the Denver school district’s decision to hire a counselor to help school board members with their marriage problems (among other personal issues). Why should the kids — half of whom are likely to never graduate — count for anything? Well, at least it isn’t all going into administrators’ salaries, as it seems to be happening in the case of Indianapolis Public Schools.

– Will the AFT embrace school reform? Based on its New York City affiliate’s response to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Race to the Top efforts, keep the money off the betting line.

– In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger prods the Democrat-controlled legislature to take further steps in competing for federal Race to the To funds. The president of the state’s AFT affiliate isn’t thrilled with any of it.

– In research: The Center on Education Policy surveys state government uses of federal stimulus funds for education. The conclusions are mixed.

– Joanne Jacobs takes a look at the Deloitte study on the disconnect between the expectations of high school from parents and children, and the expectations of those who teach the latter. My thoughts will come later.

– In Charleston, S.C., one school superintendent is lambasted for winning an award, one that doesn’t have to do with improving the education of the children in the district’s care.

More news coming the rest of the weekend. Meanwhile, follow Dropout Nation on Twitter for continuous news and updates.

– Parent Revolution’s Ben Austin offers his own reasons why California needs to reform public education and prepare for Race to the Top.

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