Education reform in New York City (2002–2013)

In 2002 Michael Bloomberg took office as Mayor of New York City and, over the next 12 years of his administration, oversaw a series of sweeping reforms in order to ‘fix’ the broken education system which he believed he had inherited. This paper details the key policy reforms in New York City’s public school system during this period, assessing the extent to which the reforms were successful and what can be learnt from a policy perspective for other urban education systems. It outlines the radical programme of school closure, structural reform, and the introduction of new measures of accountability and autonomy, concluding that reform in New York City can be grouped into four categories: leadership; structure and schools; accountability; and teachers. While a lack of targeted evaluation means that it is not possible to prove causation, it nonetheless shows that there is a correlation between this set of reforms and the fact that by 2013 New York City’s performance on national tests placed it amongst the best urban school districts in America when compared with other cities serving similar populations