Essay - Education Article in His Article, can Business Save New York...

Education Article

In his article, Can business save New York schools?, Mike France describes New ***** City Michael R. Bloomberg's recent attempts to improve New York's public schools by applying business principles to public education. Bloomberg's reforms are sweeping, and focus on accountability, centralized c*****trol, revamping the culture of education, training principals, ***** keeping a tight rein on expenses. Among ***** reforms include a standardized curriculum, which may result in poorer ***** for students with special needs. Similarly, the application of business principles to education brings up some important philosophical considerations.

Bloomberg's ***** are "the most systematic effort ever ***** force capitalistic thinking into the insular kingdom of public education," according to education *************** ***** Katz. Notes Katz, "Pr*****essional educators have been incredibly successful at fending off outside influences" (cited in France, 2003).

While the application of ***** principles is not an entirely novel phenomenon, it is one of a number of progressive trends in educ*****tion. Further, the large scale ***** Bloomberg's reforms makes ***** New York 'experiment' especially interesting to those in education.

To begin his reforms, Bloomberg created ***** entirely new administration, based largely of top executives. These included BertelsmannInc. Chief Executive Joel I. Klein, Covad CEO Robert E. Knowling Jr., Ron Beller (a former CEO *****t Goldman Sachs), Jack Welsh (GE *****) and Samuel J. Palmisano (IBM CEO).

***** change create effective bureaucratic change, Bloomberg focused on changing the very ***** of ***** Department of Educati*****. This included centralizing authority, ***** changing training. ***** included a $75 million Leadership Academy for principals to allow creative techniques to be assimilated throughout the school system. This change in culture ***** initiatives for principals ***** adopt each o*****r's best practices.

***** *****s to the bureaucracy have ***** physical as well as administrative and cultural in nature. Part of *****'s strategy for corporate change was to physically separate supervisors from staff, move them to a new building with *****n open floor plan, and transfer ***** elsewhere.

***** challenges facing Bloomberg's ambitious experiment ***** serious. In 1998, only 16% of students who entered high school passed tests to earn Regents diploma. This represented a failure of the large majority ***** students ***** demonstrate basic competence in mathematics, history, and reading.

Despite many changes, Bloomberg has been stymied by union contracts. ***** ***** make it difficult for the innovators to raise teacher pay, replace outdated computer systems, or even built new schools. On top of these challenges, ***** York C*****y's greater fiscal crisis *****ced Bloomberg to cut $1***** million from the school budget.

Restructuring of New ********** schools has included the standardization of curriculum. ***** has allows administrators to better make comparisons between schools, thus improving accountability, another key feature of *****'s reforms.

There is significant and *****ten heated opposition ***** Bloomberg's agenda. Local politicians, state legislators, officials, and the teachers' union ***** gone on record as opposing his plan. Despite these objections, there is also a good deal of ***** support for Bloomberg's reform. Notes French "***** independent observers agree that bringing