Michael Goodwin

Michael Goodwin

US News

De Blasio, wife overlooking parents in pre-K push

She calls universal pre-kindergarten “the defining issue of our times” and the “civil-rights issue of our times.” She invokes Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr., Harriet Tubman, ­Sojourner Truth and Thurgood Marshall in calling for tax hikes to pay for more programs.

She cites statistics about brain ­development in children, saying at one event that 85 percent occurs before the age of 5, upping it to 90 percent at another. She talks about the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, that desegregated schools, and claims that “New York’s public schools are among the most segregated in the nation.”

When it comes to early education, the only thing New York City’s first lady, Chirlane McCray, doesn’t mention is parenting. Until she does, she’s guilty of neglecting the biggest force for change.

McCray’s husband, Mayor de Blasio, called her “my best friend in the world, my closest confidante, my No. 1 adviser” and gave her an official job and staff. It’s safe to say, then, that she’s on message when she trots out the heroes of the civil-rights movement to rally support for his agenda. Coming from a black woman, that invocation is meant to assert moral ­authority and move Albany lawmakers to support the $2.6 billion tax hike de Blasio demands.

In truth, McCray’s approach is misguided and creates a false equivalency. Likening school failure to the race-based denial of civil rights paints modern society as the embodiment of Bull Connor, the Alabama official who loosed water hoses and snarling dogs on black marchers in ­Birmingham 50 years ago.

The suggestion to mostly black audiences that they must mobilize because the city is putting up impediments to African-American students defies reality. New York already spends more than $20 billion on education, much of it specifically directed to help poor, nonwhite children. Still, the racial achievement gap remains stuck at high levels.

As de Blasio has noted, only 11 percent of black city school grads are ready for college or careers.

Yet the first couple’s ideological bent, which favors collective society over individuals and families, leads them to believe the best ways to help children are found outside the home. They are looking in the wrong places.

So far, they display no interest in the mountain of studies showing that children raised in stable, two-parent families are far more likely to succeed in school and life. Conversely, dysfunctional families usually produce dysfunctional children, no matter the buffet of social programs.

Consider that, year in, year out, about 45 percent of city children are born out of wedlock. The total hits 90 percent in some black and Hispanic neighborhoods, and 70 percent in all The Bronx.

Attendance is another fundamental key to school success. One study found that 24 percent of black third- and fourth-graders in New York missed more than a month of school. The figure was 23 percent for Latino children, 12 percent for whites and 4 percent for Asians. Attendance rates are early predictors of graduation rates because most children who fall behind don’t catch up.

Of course, some children overcome the odds of bad or missing parents, usually thanks to heroic single mothers and, increasingly, charter schools. But too many others end up as broken souls, destroying themselves and others in lives of crime, addiction and prison.

I don’t doubt that the mayor and his wife sincerely want to help poor children. They are devoted to their own kids and discuss their daughter’s substance-abuse problems and their son’s delayed speech abilities to try to connect with their audiences.

But good intentions can’t substitute for facts. And the facts conclusively point to the two-parent family as the most reliable route to student success and financial security.

If they were to accept that reality and spread the word, their voices could lead to lasting change. Imagine if McCray and de Blasio barnstormed poor neighborhoods and preached the gospel of family and personal responsibility. Imagine if they stopped pushing for higher taxes and started pushing against teen pregnancy.

Imagine if they made a habit of attending weddings for young couples. Imagine if they made it cool to live by the old virtues of patience, sacrifice, thrift and family. Imagine if they repeated the mantra that finishing high school, getting a job and getting married before having children is the closest thing to a guaranteed life free of poverty.

None of those ideas qualifies as progressive politics, but they offer something much better: proven paths to progress.

O, New World Disorder

Around the world, there’s no good news. As it continues its savage bombardment of civilians, Syria shows no signs of keeping its promise to destroy its chemical weapons.

As Ukraine neared a civil war, its military leader refused for more than a week to return phone calls from US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

Iran insists negotiations over its nuclear program will not involve its ballistic missiles. One official took a dig at President Obama, saying the missiles are a “red line.”

Welcome to global disorder. You know America’s power is waning when the mullahs mock our empty threats.

The bad guys have figured out that “leading from behind” isn’t leading at all. Russia’s Vladimir Putin is acting like a grandmaster of chess while Obama stumbles at checkers.

But Obama’s fecklessness offers one advantage — it’s easier to see why he keeps bullying Israel.

The tiny Jewish state gets singled out because nobody else listens to America anymore. Once the Israelis figure that out, we’ll really be alone.

Every page an opinion page

If it weren’t for double standards, would The New York Times have any standards at all?

A federal judge’s ruling throwing out a lawsuit accusing the NYPD of illegal spying on Muslims got just eight paragraphs on Page A21. The Times didn’t even assign a reporter, using the Associated Press version.

Contrast that bare-bones effort to the paper’s big splash after another federal judge found the NYPD guilty of racial violations in stop-and-frisk. That ruling got top-of-the-front-page display and follow-ups running several full pages.

The difference: The Times liked the stop-and-frisk ruling and, because of its anti-police bias, doesn’t like the Muslim ruling.

So once again, it’s a case of “All the news that fits our opinion.”

Scandal with dash of salt

Reader Ray Arroyo sees similarities between the federal failure to waive the Jones Act so rock salt can be shipped to New Jersey and the much-hyped Bridgegate scandal.

“Preventing the delivery of salt from Maine is just the feds’ way of saying, ‘Time for some icy road problems in NJ,’ ” he writes. “Who do we subpoena?”

Story is a real eye opener

The London Daily Mail either has a syntax problem or a miracle scoop. Its headline about David Paterson dumping an aide calls him the “former blind governor of New York.”

He’s definitely the former governor, but he’s still blind. If not, stop the presses!