For six years now, billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg has thrown everything he can at New York’s public schools to try to equalize student achievement. In an front page New York Times article today, titled Triumph Fades on Racial Gap in New York City Schools, we learn that:
. . . When results from the 2010 tests, which state officials said presented a more accurate portrayal of students’ abilities, were released last month, they came as a blow to the legacy of the mayor and the chancellor, as passing rates dropped by more than 25 percentage points on most tests. But the most painful part might well have been the evaporation of one of their signature accomplishments: the closing of the racial achievement gap.
Among the students in the city’s third through eighth grades, 40 percent of black students and 46 percent of Hispanic students met state standards in math, compared with 75 percent of white students and 82 percent of Asian students. In English, 33 percent of black students and 34 percent of Hispanic students are now proficient, compared with 64 percent among whites and Asians. . . .
One has to suppose that their low numbers underrepresent the lost black and Hispanic students who drop out of public schooling. Many of them are the brightest boys, bored at school and lured into the streets for the excitement and profit of crime.
The New York City public school system is the largest school system in the world. Mayor Bloomberg’s inability to improve how well this system works for its students is a dramatic demonstration of the systematic failure of public education. The numbers above show failure for students: 60% of the blacks (who make up a large majority of the system’s students), 54% of the Hispanics, 25% of the whites, and 18% of the Asians.
The socialist notion that public education is an entitlement is being pushed hard by the Obamaists. In the real world example of the New York City public schools, that entitlement leads most of the students to failure. Shame on us for putting up with what happens to kids in public schools. How can we possibly think Obama will make public education better when Bloomberg hit the wall? When will we look beyond the public school model to 21st century learning methods.
No wonder they are taking their education into their own hands.
