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Sunday, June 23, 2013

NYC Educator: Wolfson's Miraculous Feat

NYC Educator: Wolfson's Miraculous Feat:

Wolfson's Miraculous Feat

It's kind of hard to believe the level of nonsense that passes as information yesterday. Despite Mike Bloomberg's education programs having improved, conservatively, nothing, his paid propagandist Howard Wolfson has a piece in the Daily News insisting thatThompson can't be mayor, as he'd be a tool of the union. That's even more absurd than the union endorsement of Thompson.

For one thing, Thompson supports Mayor Bloomberg's unilateral decision to give virtually all city employees but teachers a raise. That alone gives me pause. You'd think that a Bloomberg employee would give the guy a little credit for trying to screw teachers, one of Mayor Mike's key priorities this endless decade. But no.

Now it's certainly noteworthy, as Wolfson points out, that more kids graduate nowadays. After all, when you close schools that don't post high graduation rates, you tend to motivate principals to post them by any means necessary. You can pressure teachers to pass kids who don't merit it, or even promote ridiculous credit recovery schemes. Of course, when college readiness rates linger around 25%, you have to wonder precisely how effective Mayor Bloomberg's magic has been. He did, of course, amazingly raise the city test scores, before we