Bloomberg Claims His Education Reforms Are "Poster Child" For National Reform

The Daily News is doing Bloomberg "legacy" pieces today and the story on education by Ben Chapman is pretty good.

Here's the opening:

He ran for office as the Education Mayor, but his report card is mixed — at best.
Mayor Bloomberg’s overhaul of the public schools was one of the most ambitious projects in the history of city government — backed by a doubling of the education budget during his tenure.

From the very question of who would control the country’s largest school system to the tiny details of what kids ate for lunch, Bloomberg evaluated and acted on every aspect of public schools.

But 12 years after the mayor began his quest to reinvent the mammoth agency, graduation rates are up, but other indicators of student achievement remain flat — and some have even worsened.

“They threw everything they had at the problem, but the levels of learning are about the same as they were before,” said Brooklyn College education Prof. David Bloomfield. “It’s amazing how small the improvements are.”

Test scores down, NAEP scores flattened, class sizes up, conflict between communities increased dramatically because of his school closure policies, but Bloomberg says his reform agenda remains the "poster child" for the rest of the nation:

Despite his critics, Bloomberg remained certain of his own prowess as an education reformer. “What is clear is that for the 12 years we’ve been doing this, the results are – by any national standards – outstanding,” Bloomberg said at a recent press conference to announce a slight increase in graduation rates. “We really have become the poster child.”

I've said this before, I'll say it again.

Ever notice when Bloomberg touts his "legacy" here in NYC, it's always in the "We're The Bestest Thing Ever!" vein?

This week when confronted with the very large increase in income inequality under his reign and questions about the increase in homelessness in the city, Bloomberg defended his "legacy" by saying that there's no better place in the world to be homeless than NYC.

Bloomberg then had his hired henchmen, like Howard Wolfson, take to the Twitter and the pages of the WSJ to tout his greatness in helping alleviate poverty and homelessness - even though the stats show a big increase in both during the Bloomberg Years.


His need to be the "Bestest Thing Ever!" is really an interesting insight into his troubled psyche.

Even when his legacy is so clearly not the "Bestest Thing Ever!" - even when the Bloomberg-friendly Daily News acknowledges this - Bloomberg still touts it as the "Bestest Thing Ever!"

In the years ahead, Bloomberg will continue to have his minions write up the propaganda and "history" of his years in office to try and rewrite the story so that it becomes "Bloomberg Years: Bestest Thing Ever!"

Bloomberg is the poster child for a fevered ego who has never quite made it out of the pre-adolescent stage.

Bloomberg Furious He Can't Stop Attacks On His "Legacy"

Salon piece on why Bloomberg went after de Blasio this weekend.

Blake Zeff recounts how Bloomberg has used his wealthy connections to Zuckerman, Sulzberger and Murdoch to quell dissent from the newspapers, how he used his wealth as a bludgeon against the unions and the no-profits, buying off some, threatening to destroy others - all in a successful attempt to keep pushback to himself and his agenda at bay.

According to Zeff it worked fabulously - until now:

Bloomberg has been pretty successful in using his arsenal of financial and political leverage to discourage dissent.

Here’s where de Blasio comes in.

Unlike with so many other players who have come before him, Bloomberg can exercise no political or financial leverage over the Democratic front-runner.

Formally endorsing Quinn in the primary – once seen as an assured outcome – would actually help de Blasio in the Democratic primary, where voters have mixed feelings about the mayor (and seem to be penalizing Quinn for her relationship with him). Saying nasty things about de Blasio, as the mayor did in the interview published this weekend, also seems to be helping him. And with both men soon vacating their current offices, there isn’t much Bloomberg can do to him governmentally (e.g., cut his budget) at this point.

As for money, the mayor could theoretically empty his wallet and fund a PAC’s ads against de Blasio. But he hasn’t so far, and for good reason: Doing so might very well boomerang on him in much the same way his verbal attack has. Without the political leverage to quiet him or the opportunity to financially drown him, he’s been left to deploy his skilled aide Howard Wolfson to bash de Blasio and defend his legacy in various forums. Wolfson’s good at this, but compare it to the arsenal of tools the mayor previously had to protect his image, and it barely makes a dent. Even with the city’s three biggest papers endorsing Quinn, de Blasio’s only seemed to get stronger.

The result is that the Democrat has launched a sustained, vociferous attack on the Bloomberg legacy – on everything from his economic philosophy to his stop-and-frisk policy – and it has stuck. Over the course of the last 12 years, it’s one of the only lengthy, publicly audible excoriations of his performance and legacy that the mayor could not quell – whether through intimidation, punishment or reward.

Seen in this context, it makes sense that Michael Bloomberg would be upset at Bill de Blasio. His political and policy legacies are facing a firing squad and — for the first time ever — he may be powerless to stop it.

Bloomberg has gotten shriller these past few months as the campaign has progressed and the criticisms have ratcheted up.

It's suddenly occurring to Bloomberg that he is losing his leverage and very, very soon will be just another arrogant billionaire out of office - lots of money to throw around, but not necessarily the power to put with it to get everything he wants every time he wants.

And under all of this is Bloomberg's big fear - his "legacy" will not be the slam dunk "Best Mayor Ever" he thinks it ought to be.

Bloomberg's hiring lots of journalists at Bloomberg Views to burnish his "legacy," so there'll be no shortage of propaganda writers to tout Bloomberg as the greatest thing ever.

But the public doesn't seem to buy this and the direction of the campaign shows that.

2/3rds of voters want the city to go in a different direction post-Bloomberg.

They don't necessarily dislike Bloomberg, they don't hate him - they're just ready to move on from him.

That sort of thing hurts a man whose ego is so fragile he must put his name in gigantic letters on everything he owns (BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK, BLOOMBERG LP, BLOOMBERG VIEWS, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BLOOMBERG TV...)

And so, he's getting cranky and shrill, lashing out at critics real and imagined.

To be honest, I think the mayor's gotten off light in this campaign.

He is a fraud - many of his so-called successes, from crime to education, are based upon fraudulent or manipulated data.

Corporate criminals have been stealing the city blind while he has been at the helm.

His legacy, such as it is, is the Boxer Day Blizzard, it's waiting until the last minute for a Sandy evacuation, it's CityTime and a two billion dollar 911 system that doesn't work.

The candidates have for the most part not hit him on these things.

I think they are the crux of his tenure as mayor.

So really, he's gotten off easy.

You can bet if another mayor without Zuckerman, Sulzberger and Murdoch as a peer, without billions to use as a bludgeon to quell dissent, will not get off so easy.

Fran Lebowitz Nails Bloomberg's "Legacy"

She says we are all paying for Bloomberg's height and how badly he was treated on the playground when he was a kid - the bullied boy grew up to be a bully who makes everyone pay for his past slights and humiliations.

Here are some more of her remarks on Bloomberg:

One of the worst things about Michael Bloomberg being the mayor is that because he was so rich, he didn’t have to appeal to what he kept calling the “special interest groups” — which, you know, I would call the “citizens.”

I don’t think public school teachers are a special interest group; I don’t think cops are a special interest group; I don’t think tenants are a special interest group. Billionaires are a special interest group. So when he says that anyone who is running for mayor is going to have to make concessions to these special interest groups — that is what democracy is. Not issuing bans and demands.

He thinks of himself as the public health mayor. How many hospitals closed under Bloomberg? Hospitals: that’s public health. Smoking, soda, salt? That’s private health. And what could be more minute? I mean, I’ve never heard anyone say, “ ‘Do you like New York?’ ‘Mmm, not really, too salty.’ ”

When he announced this soda thing, someone showed me the size soda that you couldn’t have. I didn’t know those existed. My first apartment was smaller than that. I think maybe in Abu Ghraib they make you drink that soda. It seems like a crazy amount of soda; it doesn’t mean I think it should be against the law.

Also, he’s the “green mayor”? He’s the green mayor who travels by private jet. There is nothing more polluting than jet fuel. One of his little trips on his private jet, to wherever he goes on the weekend — he doesn’t tell us, that’s his private life — that is every cigarette ever smoked in the history of New York City.

I don’t know how many of these bikes there are, but it seems like there are 80 million of them. I do not want to see 80 million ads for Citibank. When they first put them in, Bloomberg said, “Wasn’t that nice of Citibank? They gave us these bicycles.” Really? Let me put it this way: I would rather see Citibank give us back our money, and then I would buy them a bicycle. And also maybe a skateboard, if they’re really good.

The overturning of the term limits — when this happens in another country, we call this a coup. We, the citizens, voted — twice! — to have term limits, and then he overturned them. I saw him give some press conference about guns. He said something like, “I believe in democracy,” and I thought, No, you don’t. No, you certainly do not. Vladimir Putin has the same belief in democracy you do.

I really felt that during the election of the pope, Bloomberg was in a state of contained hysteria, trying to figure out, “How can I get this gig?” If I was in charge of electing the pope, I would elect him, because anything that would get him out of New York would be fine with me.

 Lebowitz got it all - the hypocrisy of the environmentalism (how about the two SUV's he's always got idling by the sidewalk ready to take him wherever he goes), the stupidity over the soda ban as a public health crisis when closing all the freaking hospitals below 34th street is the REAL public health crisis, this jive about teachers and city workers being "special interests" but somehow Wall Street CEO's and Goldman Sachs are not, and finally how Bloomberg views democracy the way Putin views it, as something to be subverted, manipulated, used when needed, discarded otherwise.

Yeah, she really nailed Bloomberg's "legacy."

NY Times Poll: 2/3rds Of New Yorkers Say School System Same Or Worse after 12 Years Of Bloomberg's Control

This poll is a clear repudiation of Bloomberg's education "legacy"

In a stinging assessment of the mayor’s priorities and effectiveness, however, two-thirds of New Yorkers say they believe that the quality of the city’s long-troubled school system has stayed the same or become worse since he took office in 2002, despite his vigorous pledges to improve it.

...

There is equally strong opposition to the mayor’s dismantling of the city’s Board of Education in 2002. Fifty-seven percent now disapprove — a sign of dissatisfaction with the mayor’s handling of education since the State Legislature granted him much greater authority over the system. 

The poll shows a profound sense of unease over the state of the public schools, whose reinvention Mr. Bloomberg had put at the center of his mayoralty and his legacy. He has raised teacher pay, closed failing schools, rolled out a letter-grade system for evaluating schools and made it harder for instructors to gain tenure. 

Yet of those surveyed, 32 percent say public education has not changed during Mr. Bloomberg’s three terms; the same percentage say it has grown worse; and 26 percent say it has improved. 

Phyllis Rudnick, a 77-year-old former teacher who lives in the Far Rockaway section of Queens, recalled the difficulty of watching families learn that their local schools would be shut down.

“Parents were so unhappy. They fight so hard to keep schools open,” Ms. Rudnick said. “After 12 years of being mayor, the best thing you can do is shut down a school and start over?”

Bloomberg doesn't generate the same across the board animosity that Rudy Giuliani did at the end of his two terms (at least before 9/11), but for a man who is constantly thinking about his "legacy" (and who has hired plenty of professional journalists and put them on his payroll to burnish that legacy), this poll has to sting.

People are not fooled by his p.r. around school issues, they know the test scores and grad rates were phonied up, they think his school closure polices have been a failure, and they want clear change from the Bloomberg Years.

Note of caution to the next mayor: don't become too enamored of the corporate education reform community and get sucked in by their money and their mythology.

New Yorkers are sick and tired of this reform movement stuff and want some sanity returned to the school system that has seen nothing but constant churn and burn and disruption for the past 12 years.

They want real input into how the school system is run, they want somebody in City Hall who will listen to ALL parents and stakeholders, not just the favored few in the charter school and reform community.

They want change from the autocratic Bloomberg years.

Bloomberg Obsessed With His "Legacy"

The NY Post reports that the city has fast tracked some real estate development projects that it wants completed before Bloomberg leaves office and is ignoring every other project or putting them on hold.

The Post says the fast tracking is called a "legacy list" and has been developed by former deputy mayor, now current Bloomberg LP employee, Dan Doctoroff.

Here is the rationale behind the so-called "legacy list":

As top aides work on shaping Bloomberg’s legacy, one description they want is a pro-development mayor who drastically altered the landscape in each borough to expand gleaming office space, boost the high-tech industry here and ratchet up tourism numbers.

Some critics of the projects say the mayor needs to slow down and make sure these things are workable:

The controversial Midtown East rezoning plan would allow the construction of large office buildings near Grand Central.

City Councilman Dan Garodnick (D-Manhattan), whose district includes the proposed expansion, wrote a letter asking the administration to slow down the project in order to review potential problems.

“I understand that the mayor’s term has only 502 days remaining, but that should not be the prime factor for such an important proposal,” Garodnick wrote in August to City Planning Chairwoman Amanda Burden. “There is no reason to move at this pace.”

The plan was unveiled in July before Community Board 5’s Land Use and Zoning Committee and would alter zoning regulations to allow for more skyscrapers from around East 39th to East 57th streets between Second and Fifth avenues.

Everywhere you look, this mayor has sold out city neighborhoods to real estate developers.

I used to live in Long Island City but moved 8 years ago.

The LIC I knew is gone, replaced by Bloomberg's "gleaming" steel condos (actually given how they're built, better described as paper mache and spit condos.)

The 7 train, which back in my day was an absolute nightmare during the rush hour, is a lot worse these days.

You see, the one thing our pro-development mayor didn't develop is new ways of getting in to the city even as he was developing new residential neighborhoods as part of his legacy.

Bloomberg is not the only politician to do this, of course.

The same thing is happening in Jersey City and other areas of Hudson County - lots of new real estate development, but little to no new infrastructure to support that development.

But Bloomberg is the most proud of his "legacy," the most obsessed with it, and just as the Bloomberg Blizzard of 2010 is part of his legacy, and the ho-hum response to Superstorm Sandy is part of it, and CityTime and the failed 911 system, so is the real estate development that has happened without the infrastructure support following it.

Bloomberg really is a pathetic little man, with his need to emblazon his name on everything he owns and garner as much attention as he possibly can.

One wonders just what damage was done to him as a child that he needs all this attention and is so obsessed with his "legacy".

Perhaps it would soothe his eventual journey into the other world if, on the day our Little Mayor is on his deathbed, city residents applaud him for his "legacy" and change the name of New York City to BlOOMBURG.

It seems only then will Bloomberg be truly happy and know that his "legacy" is forever.