De Blasio puts education reform at top of his agenda as New York City mayor
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| CARLO ALLEGRI/Reuters - Bill de Blasio hugs his wife, Chirlane, and children Chiara and Dante during his election victory party at the Park Slope Armory in New York on Tuesday. |
Bill de Blasio, elected mayor of New York City this week, intends to dial back or abandon many of the education changes outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg aggressively implemented in the nation’s largest public school system.
Bloomberg, the first New York mayor to control the system that educates 1.1 million students, promoted competition, data and accountability. Amid public outcry, he shut down more than 160 low-performing neighborhood schools, replacing them with hundreds of smaller schools and public charters, which are funded by tax dollars, privately managed and nearly all non-union. He graded schools with A to F report cards and brought in a contentious teacher evaluation system.
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“Bloomberg really epitomized an approach to reform that has been sweeping the country and urban areas, endorsed by the U.S. Department of Education,” said Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at New York University. “Market-based reforms – charters, choice, school closures. Heavy emphasis on high stakes testing as a means of holding schools accountable. Bloomberg probably carried out that strategy more effectively than any other mayor.”
De Blasio — the first Democrat elected mayor in 20 years and the first in recent memory with a child in public school — wants to pause or reverse many of Bloomberg’s policies.
He has said he will impose a moratorium on school closings, ditch Bloomberg’s A-F report cards for schools and stop relying on test scores as a basis for decisions about the performance of schools and teachers.
“We have to be willing to reverse so many mistakes of the Bloomberg years, especially the focus on test prep and teaching to the test that has really undermined our