Posts tagged "howard wolfson"
Two men and the union in a room, talking charter cap
Maybe we’ll have a charter cap deal after all.
We’re hearing that the mayor’s top political aide, Howard Wolfson, is in Albany right now meeting with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and representatives of the city and state teachers unions. They’re all trying to hammer out a deal that would allow 260 more charter schools to open in New York State. And they’re racing against a super-tight deadline: June 1, next Tuesday, when the state’s second application to the federal Race to the Top competition must be delivered to the U.S. Education Department headquarters in D.C.
Sticking points in today’s negotiations, we hear, include a continued effort to push against allowing SUNY to act as an authorizer of charter schools. Charter school supporters, led by the Bloomberg administration, say that snatching SUNY’s power is a poison pill that would force them to drop out of negotiations. They say the same thing about a proposal on the table that would mean charters could only open through an RFP-like process.
But our source says that the mayor’s side has given in on at least two key issues: a ban on for-profit companies managing charter schools and permission for the state comptroller to audit charter schools.
We’ll keep you posted as we hear more.
, at 5:53 pmNUMBERS GAME
August 5, 2009
Howard Wolfson on city test scores: “The numbers don’t lie”
Mayor Bloomberg’s chief spokesman for his reelection campaign, Howard Wolfson, brushed aside claims that the city’s test scores and graduation rates are inflated in an appearance on NY1′s “Road to City Hall” last night.
“If we can’t talk about the data, then why are we even having a conversation?” he said.
Wolfson came to talk about the mayor’s new transit initiative, but he ended up spending much of the interview discussing the mayor’s education record, which is shaping up to be a centerpiece of his campaign. Wolfson only become animated when host Dominic Carter noted that some critics believe that the city and state have found ways to artificially inflate the numbers.
“I mean, yes, they can say crime rate really isn’t low, you’re cooking the books. Test scores are not dramatically higher, you’re cooking the books. Yes, you can say that about anything. I can say that about the stratospheric ratings that you enjoy every night, oh, you’re cooking the books. The fact is, the numbers are what they are,” Wolfson said.
Carter prodded Wolfson with an example of numbers that do lie, citing times when medical examiners have been encouraged to withhold death reports until the following year, lowering the city’s murder rate in key election cycles. (more…)
schoolyard fight
July 29, 2009
Thompson, Bloomberg campaigns jousting over education
The first big blows of the election season are being traded today over the two leading candidates’ education records.
Much of the action is happening in the comments section of a Huffington Post column posted yesterday by Comptroller William Thompson, who has been gaining on Mayor Bloomberg in polls. In the column, titled “Why Joel Klein Should be Fired,” Thompson described what he called “a pattern of brazen actions taken by the Department of Education that fly in the face of basic management standards.”
Within hours of the column’s publication, DOE press secretary David Cantor had responded. ”Virtually all of Mr. Thompson’s claims are incorrect or distortions,” Cantor wrote in his comment, the first attached to Thompson’s column.
Then, the mayor’s campaign manager, Howard Wolfson, jumped into the fray, posting a link to the campaign’s official response today, which indicates that Thompson’s five-year tenure as Board of Education president in the 1990s could be a prime target for the Bloomberg campaign. (more…)
Feb. 10: You’re invited!
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