(From NY Post, June 16th, 2011)
Mayor Bloomberg’s dream of forever being remembered as the savior of New York’s schools is in danger.
And it’s not just Tuesday’s report by the state on the frighteningly small number of kids who leave school ready for college or a job that leads to this painful conclusion.
As education reformer Joe Williams notes on the preceding page, major issues that will determine the fate of the city’s schools for years are now in play.
Alas, there’s scant evidence that Bloomberg has the interest — or the moxie — to do what it takes to see these issues resolved in favor of kids.
The upshot may well be a record of school failure that drags down his entire legacy — not only because he vowed to be the “education mayor,” but because he’ll have little else to show for his time in office.
Aside from bike lanes, of course.
Start with the shockingly dismal “readiness” rates the state released this week: Only 21 percent of students who started high school in 2006 were adequately prepared for college or a job by 2010.
That’s barely one in five!
It compares to a readiness rate in the rest of the state somewhere around twice as high as in the city (itself nothing to write home about). And get this: At more than half the city schools, fewer than one out of 10 kids was deemed fit for work or higher ed.
Even if you look only at June graduates, fully two-thirds, citywide, were deemed educationally unprepared.
Yes, Bloomberg & Co. have made some gains since winning control of the schools in 2002. Overall graduation rates, for example, have inched up — and the city’s progress beats much of the rest of the state on several measures.
But the point of mayoral control was to give City Hall the power to make dramatic changes — in the hopes of locking up far more meaningful gains.
And while Bloomberg and ex-Schools Chancellor Joel Klein did pursue reforms, their success in seeing them through is mixed. Alas, the teachers union has managed to foil City Hall time and again.
Two stark examples:
* Klein, in particular, championed charter schools — a ray of hope, particularly for minority kids. Yet the union got Albany to pass countless, picayune technical requirements (and funding limits) that make it near impossible for charters to succeed and grow.