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A pro-charter, pro-accountability group called Democrats for Education Reform has issued a report card on District 2 incumbent Monica Garcia and District 4 incumbent Steve Zimmer, based on “parent choice and quality schools; school district transparency; district leadership; and teacher effectiveness and quality.”

Meantime, Zimmer has followed UTLA’s lead and issued a response to the news that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg contributed $1 million to the Coalition for School Reform.

Not surprisingly, given former Democratic Senator Gloria Romero’s recent endorsement of Garcia, Garcia comes out looking better than Zimmer on the DFER report card.  According to the press release, “Steve Zimmer of District 4 received mixed ratings, with an A for his support of transparency through public school evaluations, but a B and two C’s for his lackluster support of reform-minded district leadership, parent school choice, and measures to ensure teacher quality.” You can read the report cards here.

In 2012, DFER endorsed and/or contributed to a handful of local school board candidates along with numerous state and federal candidates.

Zimmer’s open letter to Bloomberg describes the millionaire mayor as being shortsighted or hypocritical in contributing to those who oppose him: “Perhaps I haven’t pleased everyone in my pursuit to make our student’s education a priority, and by eschewing politics to pursue education reform I’ve offended the extremes of the education debate. I would have assumed that to be something you of all people would respect rather than seek to punish.”  You can read the whole thing here.