The New York Daily News has an editorial this morning complaining about an arbitrator’s decision to stop Mayor Michael Bloomberg from closing 24 schools.
As usual, the editorial lambastes the teachers’ union, which is supposedly the font of all evil in education. The editorial writer forgets that the city Department of Education agreed to enter into binding arbitration. Having lost the decision, the city and the newspaper forget the plain meaning of the word “binding.”
The crucial issue: No question is raised about why so many schools continue to “fail” after a full decade of “reform” in New York City.
How many years must it take before the failure stops? Twenty? Thirty? Forty?
The Daily News editorial writers will never hold the mayor accountable for improving the schools, over which he has had total control for ten years. He has a puppet board, which routinely approves whatever the mayor wants. Never in ten years has the board said no to any decision of his. He negotiates with no one.
They will never call him out for the charade of closing schools and opening new schools that exclude the students with the lowest scores. Those children will be shunted to other schools that will eventually be closed. And the new schools will also be in line to be closed too.
This is not reform. It is a shell game. Guess who is under the shell? Children with disabilities. Children who can’t read or speak English. Children who are homeless. Children who are failing.
Should I mention that Mort Zuckerman, the owner of the Daily News and U.S. News & World Report, served on the Broad Foundation Center for the Management of School Systems? I will mention that the Daily News has some of the best, most independent reporters and columnists of any newspaper in the city.
For some reason, the newspaper editorialists like to talk accountability but never mention that accountability starts at the top.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I would like to mention that the current editor of the Daily News, Colin Myler, is a former editor of Rupert Murdoch;s News of the World and has been implicated in the News Corporation hacking scandal. Myler, along with his former NOTW colleague Tom Crone and former Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton, lied to a Parliamentary committee investigating the scandal. Myler told the Parliamentary committee that the hacking scandal at NOTW was limited to one single reporter when he knew that the hacking was endemic throughout. Myler may be brought before Parliament to make a formal apology, although he could also face jail time.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/01/colin-myler-phone-hacking-report
In addition, MP Tom Watson has accused Myler of sending six reporters from NOTW to dig up dirt on the committee members investigating the News Corporation hacking scandal. According to The Guardian, “Reporters were asked to find out if any of the members had had illicit affairs or were gay.” This information would then be made known to the committee members in an attempt to intimidate them from a full investigation of the hacking scandal. If committee members continued to investigate the scandal even after the information was made known to them, Myler would publish the damaging revelations in NOTW.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/apr/23/colin-myler-news-of-the-world-scrutiny
That the New York Daily News can run editorials about how the UFT is harming public school children or run hit pieces on individual teachers themselves, as the paper has been known to do, while the paper is run by a criminal like Colin Myler, a man without any ethics or concerns other than self-preservation and the advancement of his own career, is a travesty. But Zuckerman has tapped Myler to do just that, and indeed, to transform the New York Daily News website into a British tabloid-type site called “Daily News America.”
We’ll just have to see if Myler can continue to run the DN from prison if the Parliamentary committee decides that’s where he belongs for perjury. It’s true that Parliament hasn’t tossed anybody in prison for lying to them in hundreds of years, but the arrogance and impunity with which Myler, Crone and Hinton have acted may change that.
There are very few articles critical of Bloomberg. If they exist they are blogs and on line papers. Here’s one:
Bloomberg’s Children and How Education Dies:
Yellow Journalist newspapers publish anti-teacher articles and profess what is “Best for Children.” Their gibberish, their mantra of care and concern for the education of children has always been part of a smokescreen. No sensible New Yorker still believes that The Michael Bloomberg administration had “ever” considered the welfare of children as more than a hopeful byproduct of the mayor’s agenda.
With each day, the public realizes that the Department of Education was always willing to sacrifice the city’s youth, redirecting taxpayer money away from the classroom for privatization, consultants and “perhaps” legally into their own pockets. All the while, they blame teachers for the resulting destruction of Education as they continue to pour public funding into worthless cronies programs.
http://newsblaze.com/story/20120205142742pamb.nb/topstory.html
I think we need to create an APPR score for Mike Bloomberg. Growth of student scores, score on the leadership rubric.
Let’s pitch in and send him some new stationery with an F in the corner and a t-shirt, too…along with a big gulp of Mountain Dew.
Make that an Extreme Gulp!!
THEIR reform has not been a failure but is nearing the grand finale…Privatization of the public system. This is not about education as we define it, but rather about control of our children and making huge profits in the process.
The Dumbing Down process is now evident in two, possibly three generations of Americans. Parents and Grandparents are products of the same system.
Pockets of well educated citizens still exist and i’m sure will be the targets of the REFORMERS as they, WE, are constant irritants, refusing to conform fighting to preserve Freedom. WE are in this for the children, a line they use as a cover and we use because we mean it.