National Results Show Education Reforms Drive Greater Achievement
With his resounding election victory over Joe Lhota, Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio seems poised to dismantle many of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's education policies. Bloomberg was a champion for education reform - during his 12 years in office, he closed failing schools and opened smaller schools in their place, he gave each school a report card detailing how well it was performing, and he supported the growth of NYC's charter school network.
de Blasio has publicly stated that he wants to undo each of these three reforms. In an editorial, the Washington Post cautions de Blasio from acting so quickly to scale back these three goals, pointing out that on the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, the states with the most aggressive reform policies are seeing the biggest gains in student achievement:
It is those very principles - data-driven accountability, school choice, honest evaluation of teachers and compensation that rewards results - that helped fuel the significant growth in student achievement in the District and Tennessee on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Other states that exhibited progress on the respected "national report card" - Indiana and Florida, for example - also embraced these basic tenets of school reform, which were pioneered in New York by Mr. Bloomberg and his former schools chancellor, Joel Klein.
