With Election Day rapidly approaching, education has become a key issue for voters, especially in the race for Mayor. Incumbent Michael R. Bloomberg was nominated by the Republican Party, though he is registered as an independent. William C. Thompson, Jr., the current city comptroller and former president of the Board of Education (BOE), is the Democratic candidate. Both have put education, along with the economy, at the core of their respective campaigns. In tough times like these, it is imperative that the elected mayor step up, take control and continue to better New York City’s education system.

Bloomberg boasts of two successful terms in office, while Thompson looks to improve on some of Bloomberg’s policies. Bloomberg was able to persuade the City Council to extend term limits to three terms in October 2008, allowing him to run in this election.
For the past two terms, Mayor Bloomberg has focused on several specific aspects of education, such as school violence. As a result of a zero tolerance policy towards any inappropriate behavior, school crime is reduced since 2001.

Bloomberg has also been very concerned with making the education system more efficient. When he ran for mayor in 2001, a major component of his platform was to abolish the BOE and bring the city’s education system under mayoral control. The BOE was composed of several different community boards and a very limited centralized system, leading to inefficiency and a lack of accountability. After he was elected, Bloomberg helped to get the State Legislature to make changes, and the BOE became the Department of Education (DOE). The new education law allows the mayor himself to appoint a chancellor. The change placed all DOE employees directly under the control of the mayor, allowing for more and faster reform.

With this power, Bloomberg has worked to improve test scores citywide. He was also able to raise teachers’ salaries by 43 percent, a feat which attracted better teachers. This, among other education reforms by Bloomberg, led to a 20 percent increase in the number of fourth and eighth graders passing their English Language Arts and math standardized tests. Bloomberg also claims a 15 percent increase in high school graduation rates.

In another effort towards increased accountability, Bloomberg created a “school report card,” a rigorous rating system which gives each school an annual grade based on academic improvement from the past year. Bloomberg analyzes the results to determine how to distribute money and help.

“I am actually a strong supporter of [Bloomberg], primarily because of what he’s done, what he’s improved in public schools. There’s a really distinct improvement from eight years ago,” Parent Coordinator Harvey Blumm said. “It was hard to change anything. [Bloomberg] brought a new energy.”

Blumm pointed to the increases in test scores, increased in spending on education, increased teacher salaries, and the installment of a parent coordinator in every school as evidence of Bloomberg’s positive impact on the school system. “[Bloomberg] really has put children first above adult constituents,” Blumm said, commenting on Mayor Bloomberg’s Children First education agenda.

Bloomberg has, however, been criticized over the numbers his campaign proudly touts. A study done at Columbia University’s Teachers College asserts that the improvements Bloomberg boasts of—increased graduation rates and improved test scores—come from misleading statistics. Others have pointed to an over-emphasis on standardized testing and a failure to reduce class sizes. Parent groups criticize his absolute authority over education policy and have complained about being shut out of their children’s education. However, Bloomberg’s overall record of success gives him a significant advantage as Election Day approaches.

Thompson, the Democratic candidate for Mayor, was President of the BOE between 1996 and 2001 and is currently the city’s comptroller. As president of the BOE he worked towards centralized management of the school system, an expanded arts curriculum, more qualified teachers and more afterschool programs. In 2001, he resigned to seek office of city comptroller, the chief financial officer for New York City.

Though Bloomberg has a reputation for education reform, Thompson seeks to further improve the DOE. As city comptroller, Thompson exposed some of the DOE’s faulty data collection—student transcripts did not have evidence to support the high graduation rates Bloomberg boasts of. He also revealed some of the DOE’s fiscally irresponsible practices, including its failure to monitor many of its programs. To address these issues, he has proposed the use of an independent organization to audit test scores and graduation rates and a biannual review of school performance which would be made available to the public.

Thompson devoted his first major address of his campaign to education policy on September 22. His agenda, named New Direction for Our Public Schools, was delivered at Pace University and emphasized curriculum reform, greater accountability for student performance, de-privatizing the school system, and decreasing class sizes. Thompson heavily criticized Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein, the latter of whom Thompson has said he would fire if elected for using a corporate model in their management of the public school system. Thompson also said that “while the current administration has spent unprecedented sums to promote an idea of historic progress, our education system is going in the wrong direction.”

Endorsed by the New York Times in the Democratic primary, Thompson has been praised for being an early critic of no-bid school spending—the hiring of private contractors to perform the jobs of public employees, often at a higher cost. He also played a significant role in the centralization of the school system and the creation of an environment for reform.

Despite this, Thompson, who is trailing his opponent by 11 percent in the latest Marist poll, has yet to convince voters that he would be the one to pull the school system in the right direction.

Principal Stanley Teitel feels that Bloomberg has the advantage in the coming election. “Mr. Thompson is in a very difficult position, [because] under the Board of Education, things were not going well,” Teitel said.

“Thompson is very capable and very dedicated [and he] did as good as a job as one would hope [as president of the BOE]“, Blumm said, “But I don’t think he would be as independent as Bloomberg has been.” Bloomberg’s autonomy is often credited to his financial independence. He runs his campaigns using mostly his own funds, and his mayoral salary is only a dollar a year, meaning that unlike most other politicians, he has no obligations to outside interests.
Teitel also said he did not witness any specific changes to Stuyvesant after the centralizing of power over the school system, and neither Blumm nor Teitel believes that Stuyvesant will be significantly affected by the results of this year’s election. “We are very lucky. We’re a great institution,” Teitel said. “The outcome of the election won’t really affect [Stuyvesant] either way.”

Although Teitel does not have a strong opinion, some students do. “If I could vote, I would vote for Bloomberg, because I think that the city has been doing pretty well during his mayoral reign,” sophomore Allison Burns said.

“Bloomberg runs education like a bureaucrat and put in someone [Chancellor Klein] who doesn’t know that much about education, which stopped progress of the education department,” senior Matt Leiwant said. “I think that Thompson would put someone who actually knows about education in charge […] and start looking at how we can reform education overall. That’s what’s really most important.”