GothamSchools Election Questionnaire – Michael R.

Bloomberg

1. Have you been endorsed by the United Federation of Teachers?

The United Federation of Teachers has not endorsed a candidate for mayor.

2. Have you received campaign contributions from the following education-related

political action committees?
No to all.

3. Do you have children in the public school system?

No

4. Do you support programs like Teaching Fellows and Teach for America?
Yes. These programs are very important, especially as we work to get top-tier teachers in
subjects that have a shortage, like math, science, and special education. Teaching
Fellows, which the Department of Education created, is a hugely important program
because it recruits high-quality, proven individuals and trains them to become the high-
quality teachers that our children so desperately need. Effective teachers are a major
component of student success, and the Teaching Fellows program ensures that we have a
robust and constant stream of accomplished individuals from all career sectors who are
joining in our mission to better education in New York City. Ensuring that every child
has the best possible teacher is a goal we will never back off of as long as I am mayor,
and these two programs will continue to be important to that effort.

5. Do you support efforts to stop the growth of charter schools?

No. Today, about 25,000 students—who never would have had any say in where they
were educated before —are attending a different kind of school, and many are realizing
entirely different results. Charter schools serve the entire City. This fall, we will have 27
in Manhattan; 27 in the Bronx; 38 in Brooklyn; 6 in Queens; and 1 – for the first time – in
Staten Island. And the students attending charters are disproportionately high-need
students, with more public charter school students eligible for the federal free and
reduced lunch program than there are in the citywide school system. What’s more, on
average, students at charter schools have been outperforming students attending the
schools located in their community school districts.

The real question then, considering the success we’ve seen so far, is why anyone would
in fact want to prevent the growth of charter schools and take away these high quality
options from our children. We should be encouraging more charters to open in our City
to help more students achieve these kinds of results. It’s important to note, as well, that
successful charter schools do not mean inadequate public schools. Quite the opposite.
Good charter schools create competition—motivating all schools in our City to improve
and serve students better.

Education will always need innovation, and our charter schools are on the frontier of
innovative teaching and learning techniques. To stunt their growth – taking away quality
options for parents and children, stifling innovation in our City, and walking back the
progress these schools have made thus far – is simply not the way to keep our school
system moving onward and upward.

6. Would you preserve school report cards as they are now?

Progress Reports empower parents, educators and other community stakeholders, giving
them an unprecedented ability to gauge how well each of our 1,500 schools perform from
one year to the next. They are emblematic of the kind of accountability and innovation
we have brought to the school system at all levels. Progress Reports allow parents to be
stronger advocates for their children and principals to be better managers of their schools
- providing clearer information than either group has ever had before. The concept of
oversight and accountability that allows for targeted improvements is a powerful one—
and the families of New York have come to expect it. Since we first launched the
Progress Reports in 2007, we have worked with principals, teachers, the CSA, the UFT,
Community Education Councils, and elected officials to improve them. We think the
reports are a great resource for schools and families, and will continue working to make
them better. Our door is always open to useful suggestions.

7. Do you believe test scores should be a factor in determining whether teachers

receive tenure?
Yes. If a teacher is not able to help his or her students learn, we should not be giving that
teacher lifetime job security in our public schools. Test scores should not be the only
factor in determining tenure, but they should be one of the factors that are considered. On
this point, we are in firm agreement with the Obama administration, which has said that
states with established barriers to using student achievement data to rate teachers will not
be eligible for federal Race to the Top funds.

8. Do you support the 2009 law giving the mayor control of the public schools?
Our administration is very pleased with the mayoral control agreement that just passed
the State legislature – it preserves the most important elements of the system, gives
parents more of a say, and establishes welcome oversight and transparency on the
contracting process.

Recent history shows the truly significant gains we have made under mayoral control. In
the bad old days of the Board of Education, no single person was held responsible for the
success or failure of the public schools, so it’s not surprising that results for the City’s
schoolchildren were stagnant. Under mayoral control however, the mayor is held
accountable, and the result has been dramatic achievement in our schools. More students
are meeting and exceeding standards in reading and math, and more students are
graduating from high school. We cut $350 million from a bloated bureaucracy and
directed those resources directly back into the classroom. And we’ve invested
substantially more in our public schools, launching the single largest school construction
plan in New York City’s history. When the Mayor took office, the City and State were
contributing approximately the same amount each year to the public schools. Today, the
City’s education funding far surpasses the State’s.
The State legislature did the right thing in renewing mayoral control, and our children are
better off for it.

9. What letter grade would you give the city’s public schools right now?
The Department of Education grades each school every year through its Progress
Reports, which is a great change from the era of no accountability under the Board of
Education. We have made great strides—in terms of accountability, leadership, and
results for our students—over the past seven years. But we’re not there yet. There’s much
we still need to do to improve our schools and give all of our students the educational
opportunity they need and deserve – and we will work hard every day to make sure those
improvements happen.

10. In the last eight years, have the city’s schools improved, stayed the same, or
worsened? How?
It is undeniable that over the past eight years the New York City school system has
improved dramatically. The most important measure of a school’s success is whether
students are gaining the knowledge and skills they need. Today, far more students are
meeting and exceeding standards in math and reading. And far more students are
graduating on time. In fact, the high school graduation rate has jumped by 15 percentage
points since our administration came into office. No matter how it’s measured, our
students have made remarkable gains.

Here’s a chart showing the growth over the course of our administration, which is
dramatic, especially compared to the preceding years:

NYC’s Grad Rate Is Up 29% Since 2002

After Staying Flat Since the 80s
Percent of Students in a Cohort Graduating from High School in 4 Years

1986-1992 1992-2002 2002-2008

+ 9% + 0% + 29% 66
62
60
58
53 54
51 50 50 50 50 51 51
47 47 48 48 48 48
45 46 56.4
44 44 52.8
49.1
46.5

2005-2008
City Method:
+ 8 pts.

State Method:
+ 9.9 pts.

Class of 19 8 6 19 8 8 19 9 0 19 9 2 19 9 4 19 9 6 19 9 8 2 00 0 20 02 2 0 04 2 0 06 20 08

NYC Calculation Method NY State Calculation Method

 When it comes to math and reading tests, our kids have made progress across the City, in
every borough. We should all be proud of this progress. And we should feel confident
that our schools are moving forward.

Staten
Indicator Citywide Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens Island
th th
4 and 8 grade Up 22.4 and Up 26.8 and Up 21.0 and Up 19.8 and Up 22.2 and Up 14.6 and
students earning 3 27.5 24.7 24.9 29.7 31.7 23.2
or 4 on state ELA percentage percentage percentage percentage percentage percentage
up x percentage points, points, points, points, points, points,
pts. since 2002 respectively respectively respectively respectively respectively respectively
4th and 8th grade Up 32.9 and Up 38.1 and Up 32.3 and Up 31.6 and Up 31.1 and Up 24.5 and
students earning 3 41.5 45.3 38.4 39.2 45.2 36.6
or 4 on state math percentage percentage percentage percentage percentage percentage
up x percentage points, points, points, points, points, points,
pts. since 2002 respectively respectively respectively respectively respectively respectively

But it’s not just the students that have benefited from mayoral control and the
accountability and transparency that comes with it – parents have as well. We conducted
the largest survey of parents any city has ever undertaken and hired parent coordinators
so parents could get the information they need about their child’s education. But we also
knew that parents deserved to know more about neighborhood schools, and that’s why we
began our annual Progress Reports. Never before have parents had so many different
ways of communicating with teachers, learning what is going on in the classroom, and
working with their child’s school to help their kids succeed.

But even with those resources, we can do better. That’s why this year we are introducing
two significant new tools that will empower parents even more in the education of our
children. In May, we launched the ARIS Parent Link, a new online tool to help families
follow their children’s academic progress and collaborate with teachers to address their
children’s academic strengths and weaknesses. And this coming school year, we will
harness the power of 311 to better serve parents through a new initiative we’re calling
‘P311’ – 311 for Parents. Parents will be able to call 311, identify themselves as a parent
or guardian, and get answers without getting the run-around.

11. Do you support Joel Klein remaining chancellor of the city’s schools?
Yes.

12. What’s an appropriate cap for charter schools, or should they exist at all (the
current cap is 200 statewide)?
There should not be a cap on charter schools. Charter schools have accountability built
into their DNA. At the heart of every charter school is their 5 year charter, which contains
the promises that they make to their parents and the community at large. At the end of 5
years, if a charter has not served their students well, they are shut down. This system
means that schools are naturally limited to those that are serving students well. Why
should we set further limits on schools that are doing right by our kids? Caps on charter
schools can actually serve to prohibit parents and children from choosing the best option,
and when it comes to education, that is simply unacceptable.

This is exactly what President Obama is saying in Washington. In fact, the President said
that states that place limits on charter school creation will not be eligible to receive
Federal stimulus funds. And just as important, New York City families largely agree with
the President. The single most important driver of charter school growth in New York
City has been parent demand. In the coming school year approximately 30,000 students
will be enrolled in charter schools and at least that many are on waiting lists to get into
one. This speaks to what our administration believes is the critical role that charters play
– providing parents in the five boroughs with choices to find a school that is right for
their child.

One of the reasons that our administration – like the Obama Administration – supports
charter schools as a key element in education reform is the role charters play in fostering
innovation. In NYC, charter schools have opened with a variety of unconventional
approaches, devising new ways of serving the city's children. These schools range from
the Equity Project, which will pay teachers a salary of $125,000 a year to the New York
Center for Autism Charter School, to the multiple dual-language charters throughout the
city. A cap on charter schools, in other words, is a cap on innovation in education.

Going forward, we will continue to work hard expanding the number of charter schools
in New York City – because they offer a great educational option for our children, and
provide parents with more quality choices.

13. What’s the best way to improve a struggling public school?

The best way to fix a school is to place a strong leader at the helm of it and to hire great
teachers for every classroom. Principals and teachers, working together, know what
students need to succeed. And they have proven—across our City—that they have the
ability to turn schools around and help students achieve. At times, however, a school
becomes so dysfunctional it is necessary to close it down and replace it with a new team
that can innovate and inject new life into a floundering school.

14. What’s the single greatest problem facing the city’s schools and what specific
policy would you propose to combat it?
It’s a mistake to say that a single policy or initiative is the “solution” that will fix our
public schools. What our Administration has pursued is a comprehensive, multi-pronged
strategy, rooted in leadership, empowerment, and accountability. Great teachers are a key
lever to improving student achievement and that is why we have given teachers a 43%
pay hike and will continue to focus on teacher quality. We will build on current success
in narrowing the racial achievement gap between African-American and Latino students
and their White and Asian counterparts. We will continue the historic gains made in
decreasing the drop-out rate and increasing the graduation rate. And we will give students
and parents more quality educational choices across a spectrum of options including
public charter schools, new small schools, transfer schools, and reinvigorated Career and
Technical Education programs. Ultimately, we will continue to press ourselves to
innovate until all of our students are succeeding academically.