Bloomberg’s Education Reforms in New York City: An Assessment
Wednesday, June 1, 2005
10:00 am - 11:30 am EDT
The Brookings Institution
Falk Auditorium - First Floor
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
The relatively poor performance of students in urban districts has
prompted a flurry of reforms. In several cities, reformers have
concluded that the key to improvement is to turn the leadership of the
school system over to the mayor, who presumably will act promptly to
install successful programs and bold innovations.
Nowhere has this particular experiment in school reform advanced more
rapidly than in New York City, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg persuaded
the State Legislature in 2002 to abolish the independent Board of
Education and give him complete control of the school system. Under
Mayor Bloomberg, the New York City Board of Education became the New
York City Department of Education, with all its employees answerable
only to the Mayor.
Diane Ravitch, Brookings scholar and historian of education at New York
University, will assess the progress and problems of the reorganization
of the city school system from 2002 to the present. What has changed
because of the reforms? What lessons can school reformers learn from
the New York experience? Ravitch’s analysis and the panel discussion
that follows should be useful for everyone who is concerned about the
politics of urban schooling.
Scott R. Anderson, Vanda Felbab-Brown, Jeffrey Feltman, Caren Grown, Michael Hansen, George Ingram, Thomas Pepinsky, Anthony F. Pipa, Ghulam Omar Qargha, Molly E. Reynolds, Sweta Shah, Landry Signé