Michael Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg was mayor of NYC and throughout his multiple terms he sought to transform the city’s public schools to a marketplace through school choice and charter schools. He closed many of the city’s historic high schools, dividing them up into small schools that rarely served the same students. He once infamously opined that the way to improve schools was to fire half of all teachers and then double class size.
2020
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg said he would not rule out spending a billion dollars of his own money on the 2020 election. He is his own donor and his education policies are designed to support his ideology which supports, charters, testing, school closures, merit pay and the evaluation of teachers by test scores.
2020
Bloomberg’s campaign announced that his education plan “will absolutely promote charter schools” claiming that “few if any people in the country have opened more charter schools than Mike Bloomberg.”
At the NAACP’s annual convention Bloomberg lamented that 2020 presidential candidates were “avoiding talking about charter schools, or actually opposing them.”
2017
Bloomberg declined to comment on whether or not he supports vouchers.
He has contributed to the campaigns of those who support vouchers.
2008
During a 2008 interview, Bloomberg made a “fairness” argument for vouchers, was coy about his own position, but said the city did not have vouchers because it would be politically impossible.
2019
Speaking before the NAACP annual convention Bloomberg said, “Our schools are not preparing students for the tests that they will face in the job market, and the tests that they are taking in school often set the bar far too low.”
2015
Michael Bloomberg wrote an oped titled Demand Better Schools, Not Fewer Tests in which he claimed that “high-quality testing is an essential element” of improving public schools.
Bloomberg appointed attorney Joel Klein to run NYC’s public schools. Staff members of Klein’s Department of Education have gone on to spread the education reform movement nationwide.
2018
NPE Action’s report Hijacked by Billionaires found that Bloomberg was a major contributor in education related races and ballot initiatives from New Jersey to Denver to Los Angeles.
2017
A 2017 AP investigation found that “among the nation’s financial elite who have helped shape the school-choice movement, Michael Bloomberg tops the list of New York’s political contributors.”
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