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The Panel for Education Policy (or PEP), enacts policy for the New York City Dept. of Education. The PEP replaced the Board of Education when Mayor Bloomberg took control of the schools in 2002. It is intended to be a democratic forum where people voice concerns, prior to the panel's vote on educational policy. Today the panel is convening to discuss new standards being implemented in schools. 200 parents, teachers staff and students are in attendance.

"I'm sure you've heard for years-even decades-that the public schools are failing; that teachers are lazy, incompetent and their labor unions are responsible for this so-called failure. The solution: fire the teachers, close the public schools and get rid of the labor unions. Then turn education over to private sector corporations run by CEOs who only answer to their wealthiest stock holders. For instance, Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdock and a flock of Hedge Fund billionaires. Let's see what you think after we go back to 1779 and walk through 235 years of history to the present. It won't take long-a few facts and a conclusion."

"This commentary traces the transition of education policy from the Bloomberg-Klein years to the current administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina a year into their tenure."

"In all the conflicting accounts between the city and the UFT about the collapse of the teacher evaluation negotiations, there is one clear point of agreement: the Mayor refused to accept a two year sunset for the plan. In this, he was deeply wrong for disallowing the city to pilot what is essentially an experiment that could go badly, for both teachers and children. Meanwhile, 90 percent of the districts in the rest of the state, appropriately, have a one year sunset on their teacher evaluation systems. "

"Former City Councilmember Eva Moskowitz, with Bloomberg's union-busting blessing, is pushing her Success Academy edu-franchise into Brooklyn. The natives aren't buying."

Getting rid of ineffective teachers is pretty much the focus of school reform these days but pinpointing who really should go isn't as easy as it seems. Aaron Pallas, professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, looks at the issue here. He writes the Sociological Eye on Education blog - where this post first appeared - for The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, non-partisan education-news outlet affiliated with the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media.

State lawmakers have introduced legislation that would repeal mayoral control of the city school system - a move that would undo one of Mayor Bloomberg's crowning achievements, The Post has learned. Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn) and Assemblyman Keith Wright (D-Harlem) claim that the 10-year experiment giving City Hall sole power over educational matters has been a failure. And Montgomery has won the support of the ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, Suzi Oppenheimer (D-Westchester), who has signed on as co-sponsor to the measure.

The city released hundreds of e-mail messages Friday, providing a behind-the-scenes look at one of the major battles of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's administration, the 2010 campaign to expand charter schools, or, as one dramatic e-mail put it, the "fight of our life."

he only reasonable conclusion to be drawn from this week's release by the National Assessment of Educational Progress: Reading and math achievement by New York City's students is dismal.

The education proposals in Bloomberg's State of the City address are being described as "ambitious" in the New York Times and GothamSchools. I see it differently.

Minutes after Mayor Bloomberg finished delivering his State of the City address today, reactions started flying about his aggressive slate of education proposals. The reactions ranged from withering (in the case of UFT President Michael Mulgrew) to bewildered (Ernest Logan, principals union president) to supportive (charter school operator Eva Moskowitz and others whose organizations would benefit from the proposals). Below, I've compiled the complete set of education-related reactions that dropped into my inbox. I'll add to the list as more reactions roll in.

Like the overwhelming majority of my colleagues, I give 100%. If you give me more money, that won't change. In fact, merit pay has never been proven effective. Right here in New York, the city dropped a pilot program that ran from 2007 to 2010 after it did not yield the desired results. Why, then, does that call for trying the same thing all over again?

There's horrific news in today's Daily News: that NY State Education Commissioner King is likely to approve the mayor's proposal to fire half of all of  teachers at 33 struggling schools:"That's a pretty aggressive teacher evaluation system," the state insider said. "We believe the switch meets all the federal requirements." Firing a fixed and arbitrary quota of  at least half of all teachers, regardless of their ability, is not a real teacher evaluation system; it's a meat cleaver approach. This proposal reveals Bloomberg's phony hypocrisy and any supporter who  claims to care about the importance of "teacher quality."

The state expects to sign off on Mayor Bloomberg's dramatic new plan to ax half the teachers at 33 struggling schools, the Daily News has learned.

A mayor's State of the City address offers a chance to look back on the previous year's accomplishments and lay out goals for the year ahead. Education has always figured in Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's addresses, often as one of his chief focuses - but occasionally, as was the case in 2003, as a passing mention in a long to-do list. On Thursday, education was front and center in the mayor's address, dominating an hour-long speech that was defiant in tone and ambitious in content. It overshadowed other issues, like his push to increase the minimum wage.

State education officials ripped Mayor Bloomberg's reforms of the city's school system Tuesday, calling failed public schools "warehouses" for thousands of unlucky students. Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, blasted the mayor's long-standing policy of closing troubled schools and replacing them with new ones at a meeting with the editorial board of the Daily News.

The other day, I was walking to an appointment on East 125th Street in Harlem and saw an interesting sight outside the huge new building holding Promise Academy, the central institution of Geoffrey Canada's much celebrated Harlem Children's Zone. I saw a teacher marching about 20 children from one entrance in the building to another. All twenty children were black, dressed in uniforms of white blouses with blue trousers or skirts, and they moved through the street with discipline and purpose. This was the face of one of the city's best known charter schools I could not help but contrast with the scene I regularly see outside PS 107 on 8th Avenue between 13th and 14th Street in Park Slope when I drive by the school. There, on a typical late morning or early afternoon, I see groups of parents, virtually all white, taking their children to school or picking them up, their movements cheerful and often chaotic. The whiteness of the group never fails to stun me because in the 80's, when my friends kids went there PS 107 was one of the most multiracial schools in the city, with its student population well over 2/3 Black and Latino. This was the face of one of the city's high. performing public schools. The contrast between the two scenes struck me because of what it said about the direction of housing policy, education policy, and law enforcement in Michael Bloomberg's New York and how they contribute to maximizing segregation in the city.

It's been a busy week.  On Wednesday there was a spirited rally on the steps of Tweed to protest the continued cuts to school budgets, the loss of art, music & afterschool program, and the sharp increases in class sizes; a good summary of the event is on the  Ed Vox blog.  There were great speeches by parents and elected officials, and I met a large contingent from PS  217 in Roosevelt Island, protesting Kindergarten classes of 28 and 5th grade classes of 34, even though there are empty rooms in the building.   On Thursday, I joined a UFT press conference at Murry Bergtraum HS, where Michael Mulgrew  reported  on the 7,000 classes that violate the union limits, with more than 250,000 students sitting (or standing) in these oversized classes during the first ten days of school.  (Contractual class size limits - already far too large - are 25 students in Kindergarten; 32 students in grades 1-6:  33 students in non-title I MS; 30 in Title I MS; 34 students in HS; and 50 students in gym.)