Michael Bloomberg

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 highquality 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 + 9%

2002-2008 + 29%

1992-2002 + 0%

58 51 47

44

47

45

44

50

48

46

48

48

48

50

50

50

51

51

53

60

66 62

54 56.4 52.8 46.5

49.1 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

NYC Calculation Method

19 9 6

19 9 8

2 00 0

20 02

NY State Calculation Method

2 0 04

2 0 06

20 08

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. Indicator

Citywide

Bronx

Brooklyn

th

4 and 8 grade students earning 3 or 4 on state ELA up x percentage pts. since 2002

Up 22.4 and 27.5 percentage points, respectively

Up 26.8 and 24.7 percentage points, respectively

Up 21.0 and 24.9 percentage points, respectively

4th and 8th grade students earning 3 or 4 on state math up x percentage pts. since 2002

Up 32.9 and 41.5 percentage points, respectively

Up 38.1 and 45.3 percentage points, respectively

Up 32.3 and 38.4 percentage points, respectively

th

Queens

Staten Island

Up 19.8 and 29.7 percentage points, respectively

Up 22.2 and 31.7 percentage points, respectively

Up 14.6 and 23.2 percentage points, respectively

Up 31.6 and 39.2 percentage points, respectively

Up 31.1 and 45.2 percentage points, respectively

Up 24.5 and 36.6 percentage points, respectively

Manhattan

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.