In Mayor Bloomberg's incredibly short-sighted view of grading schools, only test scores count. Not only that, but a school that's gone from 50 to 55% passing is somehow better than one that's gone from 90 to 88% passing. Schools the state rates as "persistently dangerous" are granted As, while schools parents actually wish their kids to attend don't do well at all.
It appears parents are beginning to question Mayor Bloomberg's well-oiled propaganda machine:
'It really saddens me that this is how the Department of Education thinks that parents are best served, by boiling everything that happens in an entire school to a letter grade,' said Lee Solomon, the mother of a first-grader at the Brooklyn New School, a sought-after school that accepts students only by lottery but got a C.
Could there be more to a school than meets Mayor Mike's eye? Some parents think so:
Jim Devor, the father of a fifth-grader at P.S. 58 in Brooklyn _ which got a D on its report card_ said students there were 'strongly invited' to attend Saturday test-prep sessions but have no time to discuss current events like the presidential campaign.
'I'm appalled at how little my child knows about social studies,' he said. 'They're all obsessed with test prep.'
There could indeed be more to school (and life) than English and math tests. But you wouldn't know it if you went by Klein and Bloomberg. Of course, their kids wouldn't attend public schools anyway, so why should they care? The largest class sizes in the state, the rampant and unconscionable overcrowding, and most remarkably, the inability to show progress on test scores they can't manipulate--none of these things will ever be problems for the children or grandchildren of "reformers" Mike and Joel.
Personally, I think those who'd presume to run a school system ought to have their kids patronize it. If they don't think it's good enough for their kids to attend, they ought to either fix it or find work more suited to their talents.
Related: Here's a new blog with a request for a respite from Mike.
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