Mayor Mike Bloomberg's 12 years in office are coming to a close, and New Yorkers will soon be voting on his replacement. Bloomberg has spent a lot of time revamping NYC's public schools, and education experts are mixed in interpreting the success of his reform measures and what direction NYC's next mayor should go in further fixing the public schools.
Five different education experts weighed in on these questions in a New York Daily News article. One of these experts, StudentsFirst founder Michelle Rhee, defended Mayor Bloomberg's policies and urged the next mayor to follow in his footsteps on education:
These reforms are working. Seeing them succeed will take time. And it will take leaders with the resolve to improve schools for all kids - a quality that is lacking in the race to replace Bloomberg.
There have been recent attempts to misrepresent the city's progress, but facts don't lie. The education system is dramatically different from the dysfunctional, unresponsive bureaucracy Bloomberg inherited. New Yorkers can't forget that.
Reversing Bloomberg's reforms would amount to nothing more than blowing in the wind - and that won't do children any good.
