New York City has been held up as a pioneer in education reforms, but New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday said Colorado’s efforts might be even more ambitious.
“In some senses, you have done something that we would love to be able to do and haven’t gotten there yet,” said Bloomberg, who was in Colorado to be the keynote speaker at the Denver Scholarship Foundation dinner Thursday. The sold-out dinner raised more than $2 million.
Bloomberg, who visited Bruce Randolph School in northeast Denver before the speech, was referring to the Great Teachers and Leaders Law that the legislature passed this year.
The law, known as Senate Bill 191, ties teacher and principal evaluations to student academic growth and changes the way teachers get and keep what is commonly known as tenure.
The legislation’s originator, state Sen. Michael Johnston, was with Bloomberg at Bruce Randolph and met with him privately in the principal’s office after a tour of the school.
“In New York City, we have 80,000 teachers, and they work very hard,” Bloomberg said. “And our kids have made an enormous amount of progress.”
Over the past eight years, graduation rates in New York City schools have increased 16 percentage points. Black and Latino students have closed the ethnic achievement gap on New York’s state tests by 37 percent in reading and 18 percent in math.
Many of New York’s education reforms have taken root elsewhere, including in Denver, where the school district is co-locating schools within district buildings, embracing charter schools and going to a sophisticated rating system for each school.
Denver also is borrowing from New York’s playbook by proposing to break up the large, failing comprehensive Montbello High School and replace the program with smaller and more focused schools.
Bloomberg also said he was surprised that Colorado, with its new law, did not win the $175 million federal Race to the Top prize for education innovation.
“I think if there was a state that deserved it, it was Colorado,” he said. “They made bigger changes than a lot of other states. What impressed me the most is they made changes that were going to be implemented regardless of whether they won the money.”
Bloomberg said he was particularly impressed that in these politically divisive times, Colorado’s legislature came together to pass such an ambitious law.
“I don’t know the politics here, but they voted to do it,” he said. “It takes courage to stand up. There are a lot of people who don’t want change. (The legislators) deserve a lot of credit. They should look in the mirror and be pleased with what they see.”
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
