Bloomberg: Board Members Don't Agree? Replace Them

I don't personally care about the issue at hand since it doesn't really effect me, but does anyone else find this just bizarre? You don't like the opinion of a board member (or two or three), so you replace him with someone who agrees with you?

Controversial NYC social promotion plan OK'd
Associated Press

NEW YORK -- The mayor's plan to hold back as many as 15,000 third-graders who fail standardized English and math tests was approved by an education panel reshuffled at the last minute with his appointees.

The proposal -- one of the key components of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to reform the nation's largest school system -- became particularly contentious during the past several days as parent groups and political leaders came out to oppose the idea.

It was approved by an 8-5 vote Monday.

Three members of the education panel were fired by Bloomberg and were quickly replaced before the vote when they refused to support the mayor's plan.

"A few of the members didn't agree or were afraid they would be pressured by outsiders, politicized, so I replaced them with people who agreed with my views," Bloomberg said after he ordered two of his appointees removed. "This is what mayoral control (of the schools) is all about."

Comptroller William Thompson said the firings were "more suited to a `Sopranos' episode than to enacting education policy for our public school children."

A defeat on the issue would have been a low point in Bloomberg's 26-month-old administration.

The Republican mayor has made improving the foundering 1.1 million-student system the focus of his first term and has said repeatedly that if he fails, voters should not cast ballots for him when he runs for re-election in 2005.

Officials estimate up to 20 percent of the city's 75,000 third-graders, or 15,000, could be held back. Opponents of the plan have pointed out that such a move would mean overall test scores for fourth-graders likely will improve dramatically next year. This, they say, would ease the mayor's path to re-election because of the disproportionate importance school districts place on fourth-grade test scores.

Critics also say that basing advancement to the fourth grade on one test is unfair, that being left behind stigmatizes children and that the plan will be too expensive to implement.

Bloomberg said ending so-called social promotion was necessary to reach struggling students who have been passed onto fourth grade and who then have little chance of catching up to classmates.

Monday's four-hour public meeting of the panel was interrupted frequently by shouts from some of the 300 audience members, many of whom opposed the mayor's plan.

"You've turned this into something political," Anthony Sarnikoff, the father of a third-grader, told the panel. "Now we parents are going to make this something political. Parents are a powerful voting bloc, and the mayor has signed his (political) death warrant tonight."

 

Yeah, I should have been clearer on this point. I totally understand appointing people that share your viewpoints. I just question the timing.

What's that? You don't agree. Ok. You're fired. Next!