Thompson’s Record on Schools
(From The New York Post, March 5, 2009)
By JACOB GERSHMAN
HOW would Mayor Bill Thompson run the city’s school system?
The question’s been overlooked as Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein plead their case for another four years in charge of the city’s schools. But when you take a look at the education record of the mayor’s chief Democratic rival, the better question becomes:Would Thompson run the school system?
Before his election as comptroller in 2001, Thompson served for five years as president of the Board of Education – a remarkably long stretch at a bureaucracy that had long been a black hole for political careers and reputations.
It helped that he had the protection of his Democratic patrons in Brooklyn. But the secret to his survival was his carefully cultivated irrelevance.
While Mayor Rudy Giuliani knocked heads with Chancellors Rudy Crew and Harold Levy, Thompson kept a low profile. On the big policy debates – vouchers, social promotion, bilingual education and mayoral control – he was never more than a bit player.
After he was elected to a fourth year on the job, Thompson was asked by reporters to spell out his goals. He stressed the need for more public forums – not exactly setting the bar high. He expressed his most impassioned opinion when he spoke out in favor of student uniforms. (He voted for a voluntary policy.)
As the school system year after year reported little or no change in student graduation rates, Thompson remained faithful to the existing bureaucracy – insisting that the school board “insulates children in our system from quick fixes, from things done because it’s politically expedient.”
While his allies praised him as a measured voice of conciliation, Thompson sat quietly in the corner of the United Federation of Teachers. He opposed Giuliani’s drives for private-school vouchers, for merit pay for teachers, for reform of bilingual education and for mayoral control.
“He was very deferential to the UFT,” a person familiar with Thompson’s Board of Ed tenure told me. “Virtually on every vote he took, it seemed consistent with the UFT position.”
Eight years later, Thompson has yet to show any signs of independence. Just last week, he posted new pictures of himself on Facebook posing with UFT President Randi Weingarten at a union rally on the steps of City Hall.
Thompson now offers tepid support for charter schools. But charter advocates, who hope to double the state’s cap to 400 schools this year, say they won’t be counting on him for help. Their bigger worry is that a Mayor Thompson would stymie growth in the city by preventing charter schools from using existing public school space.
“He’s never been a leading voice for charter schools,” says Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform. “He’s never gone out of his way to help charter schools.”
When he testified before Albany lawmakers at the mayoral-control hearing last month, Thompson provided a revealing preview of his education agenda – or lack of one.
The comptroller directed his criticism of Bloomberg and Klein at the Education Department’s “soaring” use of no-bid contracts. It’s a strange target: Thompson doesn’t accuse the Bloomberg administration of wasting money or improperly steering contracts. And he only resurrects memories of his own record at the Board of Ed – where he oversaw a school-construction program that piled up nearly $3 billion in cost overruns.
The oddest part of his testimony was that Thompson ducked the very subject of the hearing. As the GothamSchools blog noted, he refused to say whether the mayor should control a majority of seats on the Panel for Educational Policy, the nucleus of mayoral control. Even when reporters pressed him, he demurred.
If Thompson’s so worried about alienating lawmakers or the UFT that he can’t even defend a system that would put him in charge of the city’s schools, what would he be willing to fight for?
Consider the most important changes that Bloomberg and Klein have made to the education system – expanding charters, weakening teacher seniority rights, pushing to fire bad teachers, grading schools, awarding merit bonuses, empowering principals. All were born out of strife and resistance.
Our billionaire mayor has stretched the city’s budget to the breaking point overseeing a historic explosion in education spending (a 43 percent jump in starting teacher pay!), and still he had to scrape for every incremental reform. Even so, he’s lost battles. Many of his restructuring measures have been dismissed by the reform crowd as skin-deep.
A Mayor Thompson would immediately come under great pressure to dismantle Bloomberg’s agenda. How much faith should we have that he’d put up even a whimper? Judging by his supine record at the Board of Ed and his recent comments, not a whole lot.