Who Will Educate the Educators?

The inevitable passage of the mayoral control bill-inevitability was insured once the assembly had passed the legislative renewal; with relatively little of the hair shirt that the DOE needs in order for the school system to be properly monitored. And, as expected, the event was heralded with much mutual congratulation at the NY Post and mayor's office: "Mayor Bloomberg will remain the undisputed educator-in-chief of New York City public schools. The state Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation yesterday renewing for six more years mayoral control of the Big Apple's vast education system serving 1.1 million students."

But in spite of the inevitability of all this, the senate did manage to slip the mayor a roofie. As the NY Daily News points out: "Before resurrecting major tenets of the mayoral control law for another six years, the Senate created its own committee with subpoena power to oversee the system. Sen. Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) warned the committee will go into each borough and might hire auditors and investigators. "We will do what has to be done in order to expose what's happening at the Department of Education," Kruger said."

This oversight possibility, however, didn't sit well with our Educator-in-Chief: "City officials said they were not aware the committee would be proposed until a few days ago. "I don't think anybody thinks that the Senate should be getting involved in the details of running the schools, and I trust they will not do that," Bloomberg said."

Well, someone other than Bloomberg and Klein need to vet what's going on-and the reliability of the city's testing regime should be the first order of business; and if Kruger chairs the committee, we should see some fur flying in short order. When the mayor acts triumphal-"The state Senate today took a major step that will benefit millions of public-school children for years to come: It preserved a system of clear accountability for our schools that has produced clear and dramatic results for our students"-we're really gonna really need someone else around to count the receipts.