“The New York story is a success story in terms of education and it is a success story that actually started with Bill Thompson as the chair of the board of education and with Rudy Crew as Chancellor. That is when the ship started righting.” - Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a person deeply steeped in New York City education policy in a Huffington Post article.

Bill Thompson and Mayor Bloomberg are both marching in Columbus Day parades today and will face off in a NY1 debate tomorrow at 7 p.m.

Urban Elephants, a center-right political blog, takes issue with Bloomberg’s education spin and the Brooklyn GOP is asking Bloomberg, “where is the money?” for allowing the mayor to run on their party line.

Via Urban Elephants:

This video made another thread on UE that discussed the topic of low “standards” in NYC’s Public Education System more impactful…
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Via Meredith Kolodner and The Daily News:

Father of failure, or ringmaster of reform?

Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign brands rival William Thompson, as a flop when he headed the now-defunct Board of Education.

Thompson’s team says he paved the way for the very reforms the billionaire incumbent has staked his reelection bid on.

The truth, policy makers and veterans of that era say, may lie somewhere in between.

“Thompson was one vote out of seven; you can’t say he was in control of the system,” said Manhattan Institute scholar Sol Stern. “It was dysfunctional.”
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We have been reviewing various accounts of Bloomberg’s record on education and came across a report prepared by The New York Civil Liberties Union. Readers may not be familiar with the truly horrific practices that Bloomberg has introduced along with his absolute control of the public schools. He has asked to be judged on his public school record. There are so many reasons to show this arrogant oligarch the door, but at his own invitation, we invite you to judge for yourselves what he has done to the schools. We would only add that what follows is a very limited number of episodes taken randomly from only one website after a quick Google search.

Criminalizing the Classroom

At the start of the 2005-2006 school year, the city employed a total of 4,625 School Safety Agents (SSAs) and at least 200 armed police officers assigned exclusively to schools. These numbers would make the NYPD’s School Safety Division alone the tenth largest police force in the country – larger than the police forces of Washington, D.C., Detroit, Boston, or Las Vegas.

Because these school-assigned police personnel are not directly subject to the supervisory authority of school administrators, and because they often have not been adequately trained to work in educational settings, SSAs and police officers often arrogate to themselves authority that extends well beyond the narrow mission of securing the safety of the students and teachers. They enforce school rules relating to dress and appearance. They make up their own rules regarding food or other objects that have nothing whatsoever to do with school safety.
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Herbert London, president of the Hudson Institute and professor emeritus of New York University, asks how there can be progress in education when students are doing poorly on the SATs.

Via Pajamas Media:

Mayor Bloomberg has consistently announced the success of his educational initiatives in the last four years. In fact, his claim for an unprecedented third term is based in part on the strides made by city students on reading and math tests. Chancellor Joel Klein has been praised and virtually beatified for his role in “turning around” the educational system. At one meeting after another the mayor has noted that the control he exercises over the city school system has paid dividends.

However, a recent report challenges the credibility of the mayor’s well-advertised claims. Despite an explosion in educational spending and a capitulation to the demands of the teachers’ union, city scores on the SAT spiraled downward for the fourth straight year.
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* Columbia University’s Teacher’s College produced a study that showed Bloomberg’s claim that graduation rates are up at small schools are misleading, reports The Daily News.

* Richard Lipsky argues that when it comes to Thompson debating Bloomberg on education, Thompson has a good chance of having a knockout.

* Here’s an example of “Do What I Say, Not as I Do”: The New York Times reports that Mayor Bloomberg is not a healthy eater, throwing salt on everything and eating high fat foods, despite asking the city food providers to lower sodium in their dishes by 20 percent or more and banning the use of trans fat.

* Joyce Purnick answered readers questions about Mayor Bloomberg, responding to one reader that Mayor Bloomberg did not want give voters a chance to weigh in on term limits in a referendum because he knew they would vote no.

* The Queens Courier writes about how term limits is playing out in this year’s election.

Video from Azi Paybarah

Democratic mayoral challenger Bill Thompson outlined his education agenda last night at Pace University, and Gotham Schools reports that Thompson’s plan would significantly expand city services and contrast Bloomberg’s reforms, which he characterized as expensive and unsuccessful.
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Photo courtesy of the Campaign for Better Schools.

By Jessica Shiller, assistant professor of education at Lehman College, CUNY
jessica.shiller@lehman.cuny.edu

Over the summer, the state assembly renewed mayoral control of the city schools by a vote of 121-18. The chaos in the state senate not withstanding, it is clear that New York City will have mayoral control for another several years (The assembly’s bill has 2015 as the next time the law will be up for renewal). After public hearings, protests, campaigns, and lobbying, efforts by those of us who oppose mayoral control have fallen short.

So, what now? First, we need to understand that mayoral control has been falsely contrasted with a pre-mayoral control arcane, inefficient school system. There were problems, don’t get me wrong, but there was at least a little democracy. Elected school board members did have the power at one time to hire and fire superintendents and principals. It was also a vehicle for parents to express dissatisfaction and to be heard. This worked very well in some districts, like district one.
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WNYC’s Brian Lehrer has a chat with The New Yorker’s Joyce Purnick, the author of the new Bloomberg biography, Mike Bloomberg: Money, Power, Politics.

Lehrer also asks listeners to post their top two and bottom two Bloomberg moments. Listeners listed term limits, the mayor’s behavior during the 2004 Republican National Convention and exaggerated progress in education as some of Bloomberg’s bottom two moments.
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* Some of the Republican candidates running for citywide office are disappointed with Mayor Bloomberg for forgetting that they’re in the running, reports The Daily News. In an interview, Bloomberg said that the Democratic challengers for comptroller and public advocate are “running against nobody, I assume.”

* City Room says the mayor’s race is all about education today.

* Queens Crap has part five of the Bloomberg: He’s Just Like One of Us series.