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JUNE 9, 2003
Can Bloomberg Fix New York's Schools? New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is attempting to do what no predecessor has ever tried -- dramatically change the structure of New York's huge public school system in order to improve the performance of its students. It's not that success will quickly be measured in terms of soaring math and reading scores for the city's 1.1 million public school students. There are simply too many socioeconomic problems afflicting the educational setting for such a fast turnaround. There are too many children, many from broken homes, who are without books or even enough food, too many immigrants illiterate in their own languages, not to mention English, and simply too many languages spoken in one classroom for such a reversal to happen. But by bringing in outsiders from the business world to break the chains that have kept the school system from innovating over the decades, the mayor hopes to make a start. If he succeeds, Bloomberg will return New York's public school system to its original purpose -- providing the means of upward mobility to millions of poor kids and immigrants who have always made up so much of the city. He's moving fast. To break the Board of Education bureaucracy, Bloomberg fired 1,000 administrators and moved the remainder out of their Brooklyn headquarters without staffs. He put them into open cubicles in a building right across from City Hall. To run the schools, Bloomberg appointed ex-Bertelsmann exec and former federal trustbuster Joel Klein. Klein, a graduate of city public schools himself, has persuaded two Wall Street investment bankers and a former high tech CEO to join him, among others. He's also lined up Jack Welch, Eli Broad, and IBM CEO Sam Palmisano to provide money and advice. A private contribution of $75 million is launching a Leadership Academy for principals modeled after General Electric's legendary Crotonville facility for managers. There, Klein hopes to emulate Welch in changing the values and culture of the schools' principals and use them as key levers to change the system. Bloomberg's effort is already creating a backlash. The teachers' union is withdrawing its support for his reform effort, and some state legislators and other politicians are suing to roll back changes as well. New York's schools have been so dysfunctional for so long, any win for Bloomberg would be a big win for the city's children -- and perhaps a model for other big cities.  Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
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