Carol Burris wrote about Michael Bloomberg’s education ideas several years ago when she was a high school principal on Long Island in New York.
You have to love New York City’s mayor. Michael Bloomberg speaks his mind, never holding back. While most self-proclaimed school reformers do the Dance of the Seven Veils, slowly revealing their agenda, the mayor jumps up on stage and gives you the ‘full monty.’ He’s sure he has the solution for all that ails New York’s schools, and he is not shy about sharing.
Last Thursday, he told an MIT conference audience how to quickly improve public schools. “I would, if I had the ability – which nobody does really – to just design a system and say, ‘ex cathedra, this is what we’re going to do,’ you would cut the number of teachers in half, but you would double the compensation of them and you would weed out all the bad ones and just have good teachers. And double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students.”
Now that’s an interesting proposal to promote college readiness: lecture halls for third graders.
The mayor never cites any research to support his claims about what’s a good deal for students. Nor does he explain a sensible way to determine the bottom half of teachers — the ones who would be sent packing. But he should be forgiven on this point since there is, in fact, no such research and no such sensible way.
Yet as astounding as his statement might be, the mayor’s solution is not pulled from thin air. In fact, his assumption is the foundational belief on which the State of New York has designed its teacher and principal evaluation system.
The evaluation system, APPR, actually assumes that half of all teachers are not effective (ineffective or developing), although there is no evidence that that is the case. In fact, the State Education Department has created a bell curve evaluative system on which to place teachers to make it so. Now that, Mayor Mike, is ex cathedra.
Mayor Mike loved test scores and data. The fact that New York City made no more progress on national tests than any other city during his twelve years in office says something about his shallow knowledge of education. He left behind a school system that had gone through four major reorganizations; that relied on business consultants rather than educators for major decisions; that fired many teachers and principals and closed many schools; that introduced dozens of new selective schools; that won the title of the most racially segregated school system in the nation. He was really good at disruption, not so much at actually improving education.
I received a “letter” in the mail from Bloomberg yesterday. I liked a lot of what he said in the letter. And so I was wondering, ….. and now you have answered my question:
“‘And double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students.'”
Thank you, CBK
What a great idea. Lecture halls for all elementary students. Large class sizes is NO problem for really good teachers. I had band classes of 85 students when we met after school but the thought of that in my first grades doesn’t seem quite right. But then, I obviously wasn’t one of the ‘better teachers’. How about the four year olds? They really need large class sizes.
“lecture halls for third graders.” LOL. That’s funny.
But I suspect that he is not envisioning the lecture hall but, rather, 80 kids in a room, working at their computers, with a single proctor walking around to make sure that the computers and the kids are working.
Several years ago, Gates gave a talk in which he said that almost all the costs in schools were in a) facilities and b) salaries. But both, he argued, could be reduced enormously by switching to instruction via computer. And–such serendipity!–he just happened to be someone whose fortune came from sales of computers and computer software and services! What a coincidence!
That was years ago, before actual experience showed that completion rates for online courses are really, really low. Those who looked forward to enormous savings by completely computerizing the training (roll over, sit up, good boy) of Prole children have had to retreat from the distance learning model to the room full of kids with a proctor model.
My father was a very good businessman, raised up in an era and family where ethics mattered as well as the bottom line. He was also the president of the local school board when I was growing up. As a matter of course, he ran for reelection while proposing a raise in property taxes. He lost. One of my friends’ fathers led the opposition. I remember she asked me if my father was upset by her father’s opposition to mine and would it affect our friendship. I must have looked puzzled. It never occurred to me that I shouldn’t like her anymore; my father never said anything negative about her father or our friendship. He didn’t see it as a personal attack and would never suggest that we treat it as such. I’m sure he felt vindicated two years later when the board ended up proposing and winning a referendum to raise taxes for the schools.
While I admired my father immensely, he could be pretty clueless when it came to interpersonal matters, though. My mother was the expert at sorting out the social scene even to the point of telling my father he needed to raise his secretary’s salary, which he always did. She championed equal treatment of girls (with four daughters) at the high school. In those days, the boys got most of the extracurricular dollars through sports while the girls were paying for their own gym uniforms. That changed under my father but only because my mother pointed it out. He totally agreed; he just didn’t see it without her input. I don’t quite understand how we got into this situation where the human factor has been almost totally ignored. Somehow, those voices reminding the powers that be of the human factors have been disrespected and dismissed.
Sounds as though you chose your parents well!!!! A wonderful comment. Thank you.
I was very lucky although I think I was about 40 with four kids of my own when I finally said to my mom that I was finally old enough to own my mistakes and not blame my shortcomings on her. 🙂
That sounds about right.
Thanks for this story. I have a close friend who recently wrote a short memory of his growing up on a farm in Tennessee. Like you he has a wonderful grasp of language, and his book was a fascinating commentary on his family and community. I think you should try this.
Unless little people write their history, we only have the history of famous people.
Thank you for the lovely compliment! I’m glad you enjoy my meanderings.
I think that’s a good use of Bloomberg’s money at Johns Hopkins and I’d love to hear the Johns Hopkins University administration weigh in. Michael Bloomberg says the university should use his money to have only 20% of their professors allowed to teach classes — the ones who Bloomberg and Johns Hopkins have deemed the ‘best teachers” and the undergrads would all be in classes of a minimum of 150 in each class with the honor of having far superior professors as per Bloomberg. The rest of the professors can do research or get fired, as per Bloomberg.
And it will make Johns Hopkins the superior university Bloomberg wants, and he will be delighted knowing that only the professors deemed the “best teachers” would teach in class sizes of 150 or more. Every student at Johns Hopkins will benefit under the new “Bloomberg plan” of one “best” professor per 150 students.
Of course, what Bloomberg is never asked is why he sent his daughters to private schools with small classes and actually gave those schools additional donations.
Bloomberg wasn’t advocating that his own daughters’ private schools change so that every single student had the “best” teacher in the grade and got to be in a class of 50.
Bloomberg doesn’t even believe half the things he says. In order to believe Bloomberg was telling the truth, one would have to believe that Bloomberg wanted his own daughters to have an inferior education and wanted them to “suffer” in small class sizes where every teacher could not be “the best” and the majority of students who weren’t in “the best” teacher’s class were being greatly harmed – including his own daughters – for no reason other than small class sizes which Bloomberg himself says are much less important than having the best teacher. The hypocrisy is glaring, but he knows education reporters will dutifully write down everything he says without question.
Stop politically driven education. They don’t have a clue!
Stop politically driven education. They don’t have a clue!
You can say that again!
Bloomberg always seemed a bit too Napoleonic, a little man with bold plans and the same hubris. At least he intends to use some of his money to help Democrats unseat the orange menace.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
As this election year continues, I continue to weed out candidate. For a while I thought Bloomberg might have a chance of getting my vote, but alas…he is another public education idiot. Really half the teachers and double the classes, wow. This might be one of the dumbest ideas EVER.
Michael has the right idea about half this and double that, he just had it backwards. DOUBLE THE TEACHERS, HALF THE CLASSES.
The idea of automatically assuming half the teachers are bad is short sighted.
drext727: They seem to think that children are little adults. What’s missing is:
(1) a reflective remembrance of their own childhood; and if that’s not there,
(2) an understanding of child development, and where our social sciences and philosophy (for centuries now, and before that, with the Greek philosophers) have been hard at work at providing them and practitioners with that understanding.
I think also that there’s a pervasive disrespect of the social sciences at work here.
But what’s worse is: from that position, they have no clue about their own ignorance. It’s an example of “double ignorance.” They are ignorant, and they don’t know it; and on top of that, they think their own ignorant horizon is, in fact, the “measure of all things.” CBK
IT is the age-old story of super-rich people who think that being rich is because they are smarter than everyone else.
“When you are rich, they think you really know.”
Bill Gates suffers from this disease.
Bloomberg was wrong on “stop and frisk” and public education.
Bloomberg is clueless about public education, but he reads financial publications.
His idea is a version of recommendations from McKinsey & Co, offered to the Obama administration and re-breanded in 2013 as the RESPECT program (I kid you not). RESPECT was for “Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence And Collaborative Teaching.”
RESPECT was nothing more than a pitch from McKinsey & Co. for teachers to give up all quests for job security and embrace longer hours, fewer days off, tiers of merit pay for raising test scores (minimum “a year’s worth of growth” every year) for job security and so on.T his scheme also put master teachers in charge of many students as if that was cost effective and efficient. http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/obama-administration-seeks-elevate-teaching-profession-duncan-launch-respect-project-teacher-led-national-conversation
If you loved NCLB and Raced to the Top, you will love Bloomberg’s plan.
“‘And double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students.’” That is just flat out horrible, horrific, wrong and malicious on so many levels that it is mind boggling. Obviously Bloomberg has utter disrespect and disdain for public school teachers and their students. Hopefully this economic royalist will have no traction in the polls. How is Bloomberg any better than DeVos? Worse?
I wonder who decides the criteria for judging a teacher as “bad.”
Perhaps the criteria for judging a politician as “bad” should be the abundance of ignorance underlying their ridiculous policy statements. CBK
The most amazing part of ed reformers is how they don’t seem to understand kids.
My kids never talked about “lectures” in 3rd grade. They talked about people. They had relationships with teachers and other school employees and perhaps most important to them- other students.
The data crowd seems to have a lot of trouble with the basic concept of “young human beings”. It’s baffling too, because they clearly understand this in the context of their own expensive private school educations and that of their children- they just can’t seem to make the leap and consider public school students as “people”.
well said
I learned long ago that it is the most ignorant who “can answer all the questions” to a problem. The only problem, they don’t understand the problem.
Simplistic answers for simplistic people.
We were all hoping someone who understood the problem.
thinking always of that old adage about “a little knowledge being a dangerous thing”
I think you all know this, but whoever the President is, what matters is not what the President says but who the President hires. Obama said he supported public schools and public school students. Then he hired 100% ed reform echo chamber members.
Personnel is policy. You won’t get pro-public school policy unless you hire people who actually value public schools and public school students.
We know what we get with ed reformers. We haven’t gotten anything else since Bush. If they all just flip back thru the revolving door from the Waltons and Gates and the ed reform lobbies, we’ll have the same results, no matter what the President says.
Chiara,
It DOES matter what the democratic candidate says. There seems to be this notion that we should distrust what Democratic candidates say, but Obama was right up front with his views.
This is from a NY Times article published Sept. 9, 2008, 2 months BEFORE his first election. The headline is:
“IF ELECTED …Obama Looks to Lessons From Chicago in His National Education Plan”
And from the article:
“Mr. Obama added a new flourish to his stump speech, promising for the first time on Tuesday to double federal spending on public charter schools…”
“Mr. Obama’s views have drawn heavily from a cast of experts who helped mold the Chicago experience. Strategies for overhauling failing schools have come from Arne Duncan, who as chief executive of the Chicago public schools led the turnaround efforts. ”
Obama’s views were clear and he ran by embracing the ideas of ed reformers. At that time, they had not been as discredited and even the AFT was not excoriating him on that.
Candidates change their minds as they learn more. That is why Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Diane Ravitch themselves changed their minds and became important voices for those who support public schools. There is no reason to doubt what Sanders or Warren says by pushing a false narrative that Democrats like Obama lied about what they supported when they ran for President. On the contrary, Obama’s education policy was consistent with the platform he ran on as a candidate where he embrace of the ed reform agenda in his platform.
There is a very false narrative that helps Republicans. That false narrative is that Democrats always blatantly lie when they are candidates so you shouldn’t vote for them even if you don’t like the horrible policies of Republicans because at least Republicans tell the truth. That lie is why Republicans have so much power — voters believe it because they hear it repeated by Democrats, too.
Obama stood for ed reform issues in his 2008 campaign and he continued to stand for them throughout his Presidency. And voters should be very wary of any Democratic politicians whose education platform – like Obama’s platform – also embraces charters and reform. But voters should also trust that Democratic candidates don’t lie and aren’t just campaigning with lies so might as well vote for the Republicans or not vote at all.
The Democrats I don’t like have run on their right wing beliefs during their campaign. Andrew Cuomo never pretended to be anything but a charter and privatization cheerleader and that is exactly what he is.
“While most self-proclaimed school reformers do the Dance of the Seven Veils, slowly revealing their agenda”
I do actually appreciate that. I think it’s more honest and fairer to voters to reveal the agenda sometime prior to the election. I prefer that variety of ed reformer to the people who spout a bunch of slogans about “innovation” and “voice” and “buy in” but have the exact same agenda as Bloomberg.
Wanting to privatize public schools is a position. I think it’s a position that is hugely misguided and Americans will come to deeply, deeply regret it if they allow it, but It CAN be defended. What can’t be defended is insisting that’s not what you’re doing in order to get elected, and then doing it.
The US Department of Education has spent the past week celebrating and promoting charter and private schools.
I would ask ed reformers this question- is it okay that ed reform excludes public school students and parents in this manner and relegates all of them to being dismissed as “the status quo”?
Can anyone imagine the US Department of Education holding a rally for public school students? No, they can’t. Because it would never, ever happen.
It is not against the rules for public school supporters and families to have advocates. If we don’t have them in the federal government or in some states, and we don’t, we’ll have to provide our own. The idea that advocates for public school students may not exist or speak in a political environment that is utterly dominated by the charter/voucher “movement” is not fair to public school students.
That this “movement” has somehow persuaded people that we’re permitted voucher advocates, and we’re permitted charter advocates, but we’re not permitted public school advocates is ridiculous, and as far as I’m concerned just further evidence that ed reform is an echo chamber. It’s ludicrous on its face.
Chiara! Read my book. DeVos and Duncan and the billionaires ARE THE STATUS QUO!
THEY OWN THE DISASTER THEY CREATED!
I can’t speak for my colleagues, but I know when I’m looking for research on best pedagogical practices in the classroom, the first person I think of consulting is Michael Bloomberg.
For the same reason, when investors seek information technology to manage complex databases and workloads, they come straight to me.
This only makes sense.
This comes from the Indiana Democratic Party:
For months, Governor Holcomb [R-IN] told teachers he wouldn’t address teacher pay in 2020 because it was a non-budgetary year.
On Thursday, he signed off on spending $291 million in unexpected state tax revenue on several building projects. It looks like he’s happy to make budgetary decisions in 2020, just as long as they don’t help our educators.
To add insult to injury, Holcomb spoke at an event to boost for-profit/voucher schools. He was notably absent when 20,000 public school teachers rallied at the Statehouse in November, but he was vocally supportive of for-profit schools.
Once again, he’s shown us the only way we will pay teachers fairly is by voting him out.
I got an email back from BLOCKHEAD, Senator Niemeyer [R-IN].
“I’ll be sure to keep your thoughts in mind.” Yep. I now feel SO much better. Why do politicians say that?
Notice that he is giving credit to Governor Holcomb for ‘making education reform one of our top priorities’. Education reform!!
Like the subject of my letter to him?
……………………………………..
RE: Read Diane Ravitch’s summary of 20 years of education reform in three paragraphs.
It can be called the “Destroy Public Education Movement”….Jan. 19, 2020
senator.niemeyer@iga.in.gov
3:25 PM (15 minutes ago)
to me
Dear Ms. Ring,
Thank you for taking the time to write in to me about the state of public education in the State of Indiana. As Governor Holcomb identified in his State of the State address, his office as well as the legislature, is making education reform one of our top priorities. There are currently multiple conversations about this topic occurring and I will be continuing to follow them as they progress. Thank you again for contacting me, should legislation pertaining to this topic come up for a vote in the Senate, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind.
Sincerely,
Senator Rick Niemeyer
Indiana State Senate
The Disrupters were riding on high for a while there. Bloomberg, Villaraigosa, Rahm Emanuel running through biggest cities, conservative governors everywhere, Bush-Obama in the White House… They stripped the working population of everything, turned professions into gigs, and helped tech moguls turn private data into goldmines. They set the stage for Trump and DeVos.
Bloomberg has as much chance of being president as Villaraigosa has of being California governor—none. We’re done with centrists. We’re done with Third Way. The best they can do now is third place.
That was supposed to be ‘running the major cities’, not ‘running through’. I didn’t know autocorrect made Freudian slips.
Ok – here goes – I know there will be push back – – – –
If Bloomberg is willing to spend millions to go after this president – I’ll hold my nose when listening to his education policy.
We (public educators) are strong enough – and emboldened by local control (thousands of school districts), states rights, strong unions, and folks like Dr. Ravitch and Carol Burris watching our back. We will survive. (And, even the wisest of us have been on the wrong side of policy for a while and then seen the light).
While the millions could feed a lot of families and build a lot of community centers – – – put facts, truth, common sense, clean air, scientists, and experts in your commercials – – –
name the corruption, the above the law, scared of tweets Senators, guns, and misogyny, white supremacy in your commercials.
Spend away Mr. Bloomberg, spend away……..especially on super bowl ads, in red states, on world wide wrestling, billboards in outstate America, and call him out. We’ll bring you around on public education – – but right now – – be the one person on the national stage willing to tell it like it to the people who need to hear it.
He has promised to keep spending to elect the nominee even if it isn’t him. I hope it isn’t. I don’t want another president who was able to buy it. We’ve seen how it makes even decent people afraid to follow their conscience. We know from insider reports that not all Republicans support Trump but are too afraid of his vindictiveness. Not that Bloomberg would, but he could use his money to exert such influence. I want a messy government where people of different opinions have to compromise in order to get things done. (We seem to get things “righter” when change is incremental.) I don’t want another businessman, billionaire or not, as president. And no, Mr. Bloomberg, being mayor of NYC does not qualify you to run the U.S. There really is something to be said for someone who has government experience. Just like we don’t want businessmen running schools, why should we assume they are any more qualified to run the country? It seems to me that they already have too much influence.
speduktr: “We know from insider reports that not all Republicans support Trump but are too afraid of his vindictiveness.”
I actually wonder how many Republicans REALLY believe that Trump is innocent? I’d say none of them are that stupid BUT they all are afraid of his vindictiveness and they are afraid of the rubes who believe anything Trump says.
I wrote a letter to both of my Senators yesterday, Senator Todd Young [R-IN] and Senator Mike Braun [R-IN] and told them that I was ashamed of how they voted to not have any more witnesses. I said that they knew Trump was guilty but didn’t have the guts to stand up to him. I mentioned that Bolton would say what needed to be said. It is a sham of a trial, and a coverup, when witnesses who know what happened can’t speak.
Maybe I’m wrong on this. But I do not see anyone in Congress really being that stupid. Trump, so far, is giving them what they want… conservative judges that bring us back to the dark ages, tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations & destruction of the environment so corporations can make more money. Next on the chopping block will be an attempt to get rid of Roe vs. Wade, cutting Medicaid and Medicare and cutting Social Security. In other words, continuing to cut anything that helps people. More money for the military, building that ego wall and destruction of our government with gerrymandering and voter suppression are all legal.
Trump picks the best people to accomplish these goals.
I’d argue for doubling class sizes but also doubling the number of teachers per class; i.e, having each class be handled by a single teacher is suboptimal; the teacher will get sick, the teacher will get overloaded, the teacher will have life intrude. It’d be better off to have each class have a teacher and a teaching assistant; i.e, the teacher’s job is to handle lesson delivery, while the teaching assistant’s job is to manage student learning, but their jobs can shade into one another and both instructors can substitute for each other.
By adding a second teaching staff member to each class, it allows teaching staff to specialize instead of multi-task and thus deliver better instruction to students. Likewise, weaker teachers can be moved to positions where their weakness isn’t a detriment (i.e, some teachers can’t supervise, other teachers are bad at lessons, move them off to the opposite position and by pairing them with a mentor, they can improve at their weakness).
Inst: Where is the money going to come from to have a teacher and a ‘second teaching staff member’ in each room? Public schools have been underfunded for years.
There has been a teacher shortage before COVID-19 and now a number of qualified teachers are quitting.
It will be hard to find even one teacher per class. States are lowing their standards in an attempt to get a warm body in the room.