BLOOMBERG HORRIBLE FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION; DE BLASIO SUPPORTS BERNIE

Here is a portion of a Guardian piece comparing Mike Bloomberg to Donald Trump on education.

Nominating Michael Bloomberg would be a disaster for public schools – and for the Democrats’ chances at beating Donald Trump in 2020. Because when it comes to education policy, it is virtually impossible to tell the two billionaire politicians apart.

Like Trump and his inept secretary of education, Betsy Devos, Bloomberg is a fervent backer of privatizing and dismantling public schools across the country. Education, in their view, should be run like a business.

While other establishment Democrats have begun changing their tune in response to the “Red for Ed” movement, Bloomberg’s campaign spokesman has made it clear that privatization will be a core message of his 2020 presidential run: “Mike has always supported charter schools, he opened a record number of charter schools as mayor of New York City, and he will champion the issue as president.”


Indeed, Bloomberg succeeded in massively expanding privately run but publicly funded charter schools during his term as mayor, increasing their number from 18 to 183. His controversial push to “increase school choice” closed over 100 schools in low-income communities and entrenched New York City’s education system as the most racially segregated in the country.

Further down:

If anything, the main difference between Bloomberg and Trump is that the former has spent far more of his immense personal fortune to boost corporate “education reform” and local candidates driving this agenda. The New York Times reported last week that Bloomberg has spent millions to promote charters in the state of Louisiana alone. And this is just the tip of the iceberg: Bloomberg’s foundation in 2018 announced its plan to spend $375m to promote charters, merit pay and the sacking of “failing” teachers, among other reforms.

Later in the Guardian piece, the authors Dr. Heather Gautney and Eric Blanc explain education reformers thinking on the problems in the schools:

According to corporate education reformers, our country’s education crisis is produced not by systematic underfunding and social inequality, but rather by the inherent inefficiencies of the public sector, intransigent unions and bad teachers. Bloomberg has often been shockingly direct in expressing his contempt for teachers. In 2011, during a speech at MIT, he suggested that if he could have it his way, he’d “weed out all the bad” New York City educators by cutting “the number of teachers in half”. He insisted that coupling these cuts with doubling class sizes would be “a good deal for the students”.

Bloomberg may actually be worse than Trump on education if we follow where they put their money and how much they care about the issue.

I am a Bernie supporter (speaking for me and not ICEUFT here), although when I heard Bernie's newest surrogate Bill de Blasio speak for him the other day, I almost became ill as Mayor de Blasio has done very little to turn around Bloomberg's policies on public education which were a total disaster for the public schools.  I can acknowledge that there is universal pre-K under de Blasio and the current mayor doesn't promote charter schools like his predecessor did (there are 263 now in NYC, up from when Bloomberg left and 31 more scheduled to open soon).

However, the basic tenets of how Bloomberg ran the schools in an anti-teacher way with hundreds of gotcha lawyers making life miserable for teachers have not changed with de Blasio as mayor. The public is still ignored under a mayoral dictatorship; class sizes have not been reduced and don't forget the academic fraud. I guess I can say that Sanders is widening the tent with a pay-to-play pol like de Blasio who The Daily Beast dubbed "Bullshit Bill" on board so maybe this could be construed as a positive development and I shouldn't despair. It's a step up compared to Bloomberg and Trump.

I digress. If Bloomberg does buy the nomination of the Democratic Party, I will not vote for him no matter what. I will vote third party or leave the ballot for President blank.