I've got a new high-schooler right downstairs, and I do not wish to ponder the sort of anguish such a recall would call her. She's involved in after-school activities, is making new friends, and making decisions about her classes. She has deemed her math classmates "a bunch of idiots." Imagine how she'd feel if all those idiots got to see her very public demotion.
That's a hard pill to swallow. Who, at Tweed, is accountable for putting these kids through this ordeal? Judging from the story, that would be precisely no one. They defend the decision, calling it "fair." Of course, Joel Klein and Michael Bloomberg send their kids to private schools with small class sizes precisely so they won't have to suffer through such nonsense. Heads would roll, checkbooks would close, administrators would be repeatedly and gruelingly taken to task.
Unfortunately for these ex-ninth graders, in the public schools this is just another day in Mayor Bloomberg's New York.
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