That was some stemwinder of a State of the City speech Mayor Mike de livered in Brooklyn yesterday.
With the Brooklyn Steppers Marching Band as a warm-up, and pausing occasionally for the now-obligatory introductions of ordinary New Yorkers with heart-tugging tales, Bloomberg was fairly bursting with good news for everyone – save perhaps teachers union boss Randi Weingarten.
He described progress in the economy and crime-fighting. And he laid out several initiatives – including a $1 billion tax break – meant to create a city “even greater than it is today.”
He also announced a major ramp-up of his school-reform initiative – the undertaking that will, as he well knows, define his legacy.
Indeed, Bloomberg’s plans may be the most sweeping changes in education since he bludgeoned Albany into handing control of the schools to City Hall.
For starters, Mayor Mike and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein intend to end the all-but-automatic granting of tenure for teachers after three years of service.
What a novel notion: Rookie teachers will have to earn a virtually irrevocable lifetime paycheck, instead of merely acquiring one by good fortune.
It’s an explosive move – sure to send the teachers union to the barricades.
This says much more about the union than it does about Bloomberg and Klein: Lifetime paychecks first, kids second.
But tighter tenure rules are to be just the start of City Hall’s drive for greater public-school accountability. More fundamentally, the goal is to hold individual schools, and their principals, responsible for their own performance.
Principals are to get broader powers and more resources. “No one – not outside consultants or the [city Department of Education] – will be able to force [decisions] on principals,” the mayor said.
And they’ll be graded on their year-to-year progress in getting kids to learn. Principals who do poorly, Team Bloomberg vows, can pack their bags.
Which is as it should be.
There are other steps, too – including many sure to draw nuclear responses from the educrat cartel. But the onus is on the critics to explain why the current system of failure is worth keeping.
Meanwhile, root for Mike and Joel.
They’re going to need the help.