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Less than two years after pledging that he did not want to end tenure, Mayor Bloomberg struck a different chord today.

“Do I think it’s needed at the public school level? No,” he said today.

The statement came days after Bloomberg’s most recent escalation in rhetoric against tenure protections. During his weekly radio address last week, he said tenure is a vestige of the McCarthy Era of the 1950s, when teachers were persecuted for their political views.

But until today he had not said outright that he opposed tenure’s existence for public school teachers. In fact, in a Nov. 2009 speech at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., he declared, “Let me be clear: We are not proposing an end to tenure.” Last year, Bloomberg promised “to end teacher tenure as we know it,” but by making it tougher to achieve, not doing away with it. That vow appeared to bear fruit this year when the number of city teachers awarded tenure fell dramatically.

Bloomberg was responding to a question I asked about what protections he thinks teachers should have given that Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott made clear that people who observe cheating should report it. (more…)

The city should be prepared to see the average class size continue to increase this fall, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein told members of the City Council today.

During a hearing this morning about the Department of Education’s proposed budget, finance committee chair David Weprin asked Klein what might happen to class sizes next year, when school budgets are cut by more than 5 percent, especially given that schools used $84 million to reduce class sizes this year yet the average class size went up for the first time in several years.

“I think they will increase, not dramatically,” Klein said, explaining that the expected decline in the size of the teaching force through attrition would likely cause class sizes to inch up. 

Education committee chair Robert Jackson asked Klein how watchdogs can make sure that state class size reduction money is being spent on its intended purpose if class sizes continue to increase. (more…)