Mike gets schooled in failure
Last Updated: 9:31 AM, June 1, 2011
Posted: 1:33 AM, June 1, 2011
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Michael GoodwinAfter reading my reports from New York teachers who say they are forced to raise grades and pass failing students, a friend has questions. He writes: "If nine years of mayoral control, all sorts of experimentation and extra billions spent on incentives and other approaches leave the school system no better off, isn't it right to assume that the students -- for whatever mix of reasons -- are incapable of performing to reasonable standards in a mass education setting? And if that's the case, what are the implications?"
That is the heart of the matter. Notwithstanding union obstruction, state laws or other obstacles, the Bloomberg years have been a fair test of what can be achieved in a school system flush with cash, political control and determination.
The first mayor to achieve control after the Board of Education was abolished, Bloomberg set out to become "the education mayor." He pledged it would define his mayoralty, much as crime reduction defined Rudy Giuliani's.
It hasn't worked out that way. The mayor's clumsy handling of the replacement of Joel Klein merely crystallized growing public disenchantment, captured in a recent Quinnipiac poll. By a whopping 64-25 percent, voters don't like Bloomy's management of the schools. Among parents, only 20 percent approve, while 78 percent disapprove.
Overall, by 57 to 23 percent, New Yorkers say his takeover of the schools has been a failure.
Public opinion can be fickle, but it's hard to argue with such a lopsided finding, especially when it is driven by parents. There is wide disappointment and a sense of fatigue with endless
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