Michael Bloomberg's Failed Education Record

I read with humor that PolitiFact found that Mayor Michael Bloomberg's educational record of improvement was mostly true.  However, a closer look at the data finds that Mr. Bloomberg's education policy was a failure.

The only real improvement was the bogus graduation rate.  However, every educator knows that the improved graduation rates were because of "credit recovery" courses, administrative pressure to pass failing students, scholarship requirements, and linking teacher tenure to student grades.  This is known as academic fraud.

Moreover, the Bloomberg claim that he reduced the racial/income achievement gap is bogus, even PolitiFact questioned the claim.

What PolitiFact failed to investigate was the increasing class sizes under Michael Bloomberg, the bloated DOE Bureaucracy, the underfunded public school budgets, where most schools received only 82% to 86% of fair funding and the rise of charter schools at the expense of the public schools.

Just as important was Mayor Bloomberg's attempt to eliminate teacher tenure by bribing the Republican controlled State Senate by donating almost a million dollars to their campaign and asking them to eliminate 'Last in, First out". He also approved non educators to the highest positions, including the Chancellor at the DOE.  Be it Joel Klein, Cathie Black, and Dennis Walcott.  Under Mayor Bloomberg the DOE no longer collaborate with teachers to improve schools.  Instead, they were considered the enemy to the classroom teacher.

Mayor Bloomberg refused to give teachers their rightful raise, loaded up the "rubber rooms" till the expense was too much even for the Mayor, and even wanted to double class sizes with up to 70 students while eliminating half of the teaching force. He and Chancellor Joel Klein was the force behind the ATR crisis and was willing to waste 150 million dollars annually.

He hated public schools so much that he closed 162 of them while approving just about anybody who wanted to open up a charter school.  The Mayor allowed charters to inhabit underutilized public schools and used a suspect utilization factor to expand charter schools that were co-located with public schools.

Finally, Mayor Bloomberg made sure all reserve funds  were spent so that the more union friendly Bill de Blasio had no funds to pay teachers their retroactive raises.

Was Mayor Bloomberg the education Mayer?  Not by a long shot unless you're an education deformer.