Bloomberg News: Q Poll Shows Parents HATE Bloomberg The Mayor's School Policies

Wow - as my students like to say "How ironical!"

Here is Bloomberg News reporting on a Quinnipiac poll about Mayor Bloomberg's handling of NYC schools:

(Bloomberg) - More than three out of four New York voters with children in public schools disapprove of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's stewardship of the biggest U.S. education system, a Quinnipiac University poll reported.

The parents rejected Mr. Bloomberg's education policies and practices by a margin of 78% to 20%. When voters without children were counted, 64% found fault with the mayor's control of the almost 1,700-school system, compared with 25% who approved.

The survey is Quinnipiac's first to measure Mr. Bloomberg's approval rating since April 7, when he accepted the resignation of Chancellor Cathie Black, the former Hearst Magazines chairman whose three months in office drew a 17% job-approval rating and protests from parents who said she was out of touch.

Mr. Bloomberg has made education of the city's 1.1 million pupils a signature issue. He won control of the system in 2002 when the Legislature and former Gov. George Pataki allowed him to disband the Board of Education. He increased the schools' budget by 70% to about $19 billion, raising teacher salaries, test scores and graduation rates.

“Mayor Mike, you said you wanted to be the ‘education mayor,' but New Yorkers don't think you've learned how to do it,” Maurice Carroll, director of the Hamden, Conn.-based Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a statement. “Even the removal of a historically unpopular schools chancellor doesn't seem to be moving the approval needle.”

Voters said by 57% to 23% that the mayor's takeover of the schools has been more a failure than a success.

Ms. Black's replacement, Dennis Walcott, a former deputy mayor who oversaw administration education policy, received a 31% approval rating, with 21% finding fault with him and 48% undecided. Half said they expected Mr. Walcott to improve the quality of education in three years.

The survey also found that 40% of city voters approved of Mr. Bloomberg's job performance, compared with 49% who rated him unfavorably. The results were consistent with a March 16 Quinnipiac poll, which reported 39% of voters approved of his performance and 51% didn't.

Fifty percent of New Yorkers agreed when asked whether the mayor has “lost focus” in his third four-year term, which began in 2010. Three percent said the mayor's term has been better than the first two; 48% said it's about the same, and 47% labeled it worse, the poll reported.

78% of NYC school parents hate the mayor's education policies.

64% of voters hate the mayor's education policies.

And 57% of overall voters think mayoral control is a failure.

This is NOT a strong hand to play going into the layoff/LIFO battle.

There is clearly lots of support to build for ending mayoral control and top-down management of the school system.

Bloomberg is going to try and finish destroying the system in the next two-and-a-half years.

That was always the plan.

That's why there have been so many DOE reorganizations, so many school closures, so many policies that make it so hard to rebuild anything that used to exist before Bloomberg and Klein got sole control.

He is going to take this LIFO battle to the end, lay off thousands of teachers in about a month, cause as much chaos as he can over the next year, then try and blame it on the union and LIFO and get the rules changed.

When Bloomberg leaves, he wants to hand a partially privatized system with a totally weakened UFT over to the next oligarch to finish off.

That's, as Paul Simon said, the plan, Stan.

But the public doesn't buy his jive anymore - not parents of schoolchildren, not the general public, not even his media watercarriers.

He can be stopped and must be stopped.

I don't know how the layoff battle will play out, but I say after the outcome of that battle, the next one ought to be to reopen mayoral control and take it away from him.

Dunno if that happen, but it is clear that the support would be there to take away the oligarch's absolute power over schools.