CAN BUSINESS SAVE NEW YORK SCHOOLS?

摘要

Like every mayor in recent memory, Michael R. Bloomberg talks a lot about how much he wants to improve New York City schools. Unlike his predecessors, however, he has a bold vision for fixing them. Rais-ing his voice over the buzz from the warren of cubicles he has incongruously installed in the 200-year-old City Hall, the mayor is almost giddy as he describes how he has terrorized New York's educational establishment. Among his first moves were to close the Dept. of Education's medievally dingy headquarters in Brooklyn, fire more than 1,000 administrators, and install his hand-picked team in a luxuriously restored courthouse in lower Manhattan―a bright, airy symbol of the system's rebirth. "Bureaucracies always have the attitude 'Yeah, we've seen reformers before, Mac. We'll outlive you,'" says Bloomberg. "So what did I do to break up this bureaucracy? I went over to headquarters, took the key people out without their staffs, brought them to a new building with an open floor plan, and then sold off the old building and transferred all the people elsewhere."