Bloomberg Defends His NYC Education Legacy: Here is What He Neglects to Mention | janresseger

Bloomberg Defends His NYC Education Legacy: Here is What He Neglects to Mention | janresseger

Bloomberg Defends His NYC Education Legacy: Here is What He Neglects to Mention

In Tuesday night’s debate, Mike Bloomberg defended his education legacy in New York City.  He was the city’s mayor, and the state-appointed leader of the city’s schools for over a decade from 2002 until 2013.  In Tuesday’s debate, he repeated his support for charter schools—and by extension the imposition of universal high school choice across NYC’s enormous school district, serving 1.1 million students.

One of NYC’s best known public school advocates, Leonie Haimson explains, “When I heard that he was running for president, it felt like the return of a bad dream.” Haimson personally lived through the decade when Bloomberg brought technocratic, corporate style disruption and marketplace policy to the NYC schools. She watched the process from the inside.  But even from far away, I will never forget learning about Bloomberg’s radical experiment: Bloomberg obliterated the city’s institutional infrastructure of regional and neighborhood high schools. Although overall the high school graduation rate rose, the high school closures, intensifying racial and economic segregation, and the school choice disruption undermined the whole endeavor. And once such an experiment is launched there is no going back.

At a Children’s Defense Fund conference eight or nine years ago, I found myself eating lunch with several NYC middle school guidance counselors, who described the impossible task of trying to help dozens of eighth graders—middle school students without any experience outside of their immediate neighborhoods—sort through a telephone book-sized high school choice guidebook to look for the best high school fit. These counselors told me that they believed NYC high school choice had been, in reality, designed to favor the children of savvy parents who knew how to get their children on the right track beginning in Kindergarten. These counselors were exhausted, overwhelmed, and worried about the effect on vulnerable CONTINUE READING: Bloomberg Defends His NYC Education Legacy: Here is What He Neglects to Mention | janresseger