Schooling the Scholars

Just when you thought that the Bloombergistas had reformed the city's school system into a Valhalla of educational achievement, along comes more evidence that the entire achievement here is based more on spin than substance. As the NY Sun reports this morning: "In what is likely to be the area's largest education-related rally in months, about 600 parents are expected to gather today in Lower Manhattan to demand an overhaul of the city's public middle schools."

Overhaul, you say? But what for, when the changes that have been wrought by the educational elite at Tweed have made radical breakthroughs in the historic underachievement by city school kids-particularly Black and Latino youngsters? Apparently, this is another example of how Klein's hype fails to match the reality in the schools.

The protest is being led by the Coalition for Educational Justice, and is being staged to debunk the Bloomberg PR campaign: "The event is timed with the release a new report disputing Mayor Bloomberg's claims that racial and economic achievement gaps have closed under his watch.
"In a crucial part of the school system — the middle grades — the gap is not closing," the report, from a group of parents across the city, the Coalition for Educational Justice, says."

This is just another sad case of how Mayor Mike has successfully bamboozled the larger public, and a salient example as well of the lack of real media scrutiny behind all of the mayoral hoo ha. But as Chico Marx once said, when interrupted in flagrante delicto by a husband; "Who're going to believe, me or your own eyes?"