Mayor Bill De Blasio Is More Like Michael Bloomberg.When It Comes To Education Policy.

When Bill de Blasio was a candidate for Mayor he positioned himself as the anti-Bloomberg.  His campaign promise was to reduce class size, bring respect to the teaching profession, and  no more closing schools.  To be fair, Bill de Blasio did live up to his promise in limiting charter, schools, appoint an educator as Chancellor, and to cooperate with the UFT on a new contract,  However, in the first term Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed a Joel Klein Deputy Chancellor (Carmen Farina) who turned out to be more the problem then the solution as she kept 80% of the Bloomberg era policymakers and picked Superintendents on who they knew rather than what they knew.

Ask the teachers in the trenches if the classroom environment is different now then under Michael Bloomberg and their answer is a resounding no!  Class sizes are far too large, Charlotte Dainelson is still used to evaluate teachers, and 3020-a charges against educators remain high and essentially unchanged, when compared to the third term of the Bloomberg era.

In addition, the "gotcha philosophy" is still the theme of the day and the DOE still goes after veteran teachers, either by their fair student funding policy or by Charlotte Danielson as administrators used the rubric as a weapon to force senior teachers to either retire or face 3020-a charges. The ATR pool continues to exist with 1,300 ATRs still without a classroom, despite candidate Bil de Blasio's intention of placing them in vacancies when he became Mayor.  Finally, the racial/income achievement gap is as large as ever.  Another example of Mayor Bill de Blasio becoming more like Michael Bloomberg is he forced one of his PEP appointees to resign after she voted not to close two Far Rockaway schools.

In some ways the Bill de Blasio administration is worse.  He allows cellphones in the schools despite evidence that student cellphone use reduces academic achievement.  He also limited student suspensions and is a supporter of restorative justice instead.    The result is the most students feel less safe in the schools. The lax student discipline code is a disaster.  Read the NYC  kids pac report for all the promises that Mayor Bill de Blasio broke in the 2016 Mayoral report card..

The bottom line Mayor Bill de Blasio is becoming more like Michael Bloomberg and that can only increase he already low morale of the classroom teacher and hurt the students down the road.