A well run school system for Bloomberg is one in which teachers are not really teachers but kind of low level bureaucrats/ trainers who refer to the data driven system to learn what a student knows or needs to know and then fills the student’s head with the missing data. In time, so the thinking goes, this process prepares said students to compete successfully in the ever more competitive global economy. In a well-run school system such low-level bureaucrats/ trainers have no rights and therefore no need for a union to protect their non-existent rights. Their work will be judged on an annual basis according to how well or poorly their students achieve on multiple-choice tests, a true and objective measure of both student learning and teacher/ trainer competency.
The principal in a well run school – preferably 25 -30 years old with little or no teaching experience and a graduate of Bloomberg’s Leadership Academy – should behave not like a principal — which is to say, the lead teacher — but rather like a CEO, ever mindful of the rising or falling test scores, ever vigilant for slackers, techno heresy and noncompliant thinkers of any kind.
He or she should also talk a great deal about the need for community.
In short, for Bloomberg a well-run school system looks amazingly like Bloomberg L.P., the financial software service company that Bloomberg and Bloomberg alone ruled with an iron hand and a steely eye and which earned him his billions and billions and billions of dollars.
You can actually read Bloomberg's speech wanting to circumvent teacher protections right here, if you can stand it
A businessman who erroneously believes schools too should be run like businesses.
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