By Joe Williams
(From New York Post, January 15, 2012)
After a pretty rough year at Department of Education headquarters, Mayor Bloomberg appears to have gotten his school-reform groove back. It couldn’t come at a more crucial time. The city’s public schools have made some real progress on Bloomberg’s watch, but need a new shot in the arm to help many more students meet higher standards and ensure they’re ready for college.
The mayor laid out a bold and aggressive agenda in his State of the City Address last week, full of common-sense ideas that hark back to the early days of his tenure when no cow was too sacred in the pursuit of higher achievement.
Back then, he took on the three pillars of the education bureaucracy — tenure, seniority and lock-step teacher pay — and refocused our schools on empowerment for teachers and principals and more accountability for results.
Nine years in, it’s hard to deny (although many have tried) the positive consequences of his reforms, like the fact that thousands more students are graduating high school and families have more than 400 new schools from which to choose. Principals hold unprecedented authority over their school budgets and design. Teachers have much higher salaries and new routes into the profession.