They're holding hearings on mayoral control after five years. To the surprise of no one, Mike and Joel claim it's a huge success. Apparently, whenever they are able to manipulate test scores, they go up (Just ignore those nasty NAEP scores, please).
But test scores aren't everything. In my neck of the woods, Mayor Mike, through his unyielding diligence, has managed to squeeze more kids than ever before in our school. We're open from dusk to dawn, and we serve lunch to lucky kids at 9 AM. Not only that, but we're taking dozens of new admits every week. The intrepid admissions officer knows no bounds. Free space in NYC, after all, is for charter schools.
Mayor Mike knows how to do more with less (Or perhaps it's less with more, I can never remember). Despite the highest class sizes in the state, Mayor Mike has shamelessly run commercials proclaiming that class sizes have gone down. They haven't, actually, even if you accept his preposterous statistical claims they're down by .2% of a student per class. Yet he's still managed to make a lot of people believe it. I heard a clueless radio host reciting the false news about class size as though it were true.
It's not easy to make people believe this emperor has clothes, but Mayor Mike's PR machine manages. It's sad the UFT is not able to churn out PR like that. It's even sadder that, despite this mayor's open contempt for working teachers, the UFT will not take a stand against the disaster that mayoral control has been. It's time for Ms. Weingarten to stop pussyfooting around, and to tell her patronage mill to oppose mayoral control as though their jobs and second pensions depended on it.
Of course, that may risk alienating the affections of Rod "The NEA is a terrorist organization" Paige, her biggest fan.
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