Visiting a Queens school this week, Mayor de Blasio was in typical boast mode, claiming the world of education began anew the day he took office. He insisted his budget, expanded pre-kindergarten and the new teachers’ contract “will fundamentally improve” New York schools.
“These aren’t pilot programs that help a lucky few; they are foundational changes that will lift up schools in every neighborhood,” he declared.
His sidekick, Chancellor Carmen Fariña, was over-the-top, too, saying she wants parents to know “that this is a whole new day” and that “they can go to school feeling very comfortable and very good about themselves.”
Maybe the happy talk was a smoke screen, because the real news of the day came later and without fanfare. It was a dispatch from Fariña’s office detailing how she and de Blasio, instead of lifting kids up, are dumbing down standards.
After wading through gobs of educrat-speak about amendments and resolutions, the diligent reader comes to the meat: any student in grades 3-8 who fails the Common Core exams can get a back-door pass to the next grade.
Or, as Fariña puts it, a student can be promoted by “the integrated use of multiple measures, including a holistic assessment of student work and students’ demonstration of sufficient progress toward attaining Common Core Learning Standards.” She removes any semblance of objective standards, saying “state test scores may not be the primary or major factor in promotion decisions.”
The chancellor even puts a heavy burden on the school, saying that for any student who fails exams, the “school shall compile a promotion portfolio, and if the principal determines that the student’s promotion portfolio demonstrates that the student has attained minimum promotion benchmarks, the student shall be promoted.”
There are other changes that all add up to the same thing: Standards are now subjective, and the goal is to move kids along, ready or not.
This is social promotion, and it is official policy under de Blasio. There will be two guaranteed results: Even fewer kids will be held back, and more kids will graduate who can’t read their diplomas.
If this is what he means by “progressive values” — another of the mayor’s revealing tics — the impact will be decidedly regressive. Sending kids into the world without a basic education dooms them.
Yet de Blasio is a serial abuser of language, using words that sound like one thing but, in context, actually mean something else. Take his embrace, literal and rhetorical, of teachers union boss Michael Mulgrew.
A day after The Post reported that Mulgrew told union co-conspirators he was proud to be “at war with reformers,” de Blasio publicly defended him, saying the new contract “is absolutely a document filed with reform and improvements.” He added that Mulgrew was “front and center in making those reforms happen with us and I respect him.”
To recap, Mulgrew is “at war with reformers,” but agreed to “reforms” with de Blasio. Which can only mean one thing: There are no good changes for students or taxpayers in the budget or teachers’ contract. The piggy union took all the goodies.
Indeed, city Comptroller Scott Stringer quickly blew the whistle on a sleight-of-hand maneuver de Blasio used to account for some retroactive payments to teachers, and Moody’s rating agency warned about $5 billion in deficits tied to the contract.
And that’s just the early results, with many details of both documents still unclear. The hide-and-seek game recalls Nancy Pelosi’s line about ObamaCare: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it.” We know how that’s working out, and trust that more unhappy details about the mayor’s claims also will emerge over time.
As for de Blasio’s dumbing-down agenda, the new, lower standards are set to be rubber-stamped by his Panel for Educational Policy on May 29. The location of the public meeting is symbolically, if inadvertently, perfect.
It’s at Murry Bergtraum HS in Manhattan, a school dubbed the “fail factory” because failing students get full credit without attending class by watching a video and taking tests online from home. It’s a scandal, or at least used to be.Thanks to the new “reforms,” Murry Bergtraum will have plenty of company. And de Blasio will hail them as a success.
Speak of the devil, or shut up
A former secretary of state, the head of the International Monetary Fund and a human-rights activist are effectively blocked from speaking at top universities because some students and faculty don’t approve of their politics, but a satanic cult got a green light for a “black mass” at Harvard.
No need to ask who’s running the asylum. The inmates are firmly in charge.
Spring madness on campus is marked this year by an epidemic of liberal intolerance. Protesting an invited speaker is one thing; demanding the invitation be withdrawn is quite another.
But such is the closed mindset of radicals whose sensibilities are so tender that they cannot abide any ideas that do not conform to their own. Even worse are the spineless university officials who surrender to the tiny mobs. They are guilty of malpractice for teaching whiners that they can win by threatening to spoil graduation.
So Condoleezza Rice is hung out to dry before withdrawing from Rutgers’ commencement, and IMF chief Christine Lagarde makes the same decision after a mere 500 Smith College students signed a petition against her appearance. Poor Ayaan Hirsi Ali, previously threatened with death for criticizing Islam’s treatment of women, didn’t get a choice at Brandeis University, with quisling officials rescinding their offer of an honorary degree after protests.
Against that backdrop, the decision by Harvard President Drew Faust to condemn as “abhorrent” the satanic mass by a student group while letting it go forward achieved a balance. She properly expressed outrage at the affront to Christianity, while also honoring students’ freedom of speech. The result was the event was moved off campus and scaled down.
Her bargain — Faustian, you might say — recognizes that diversity in ideas is important and necessary. Sadly, that’s a lesson lost at Rutgers, Smith and Brandeis.
Enough to make a citizen sick
Reader Peter Hess sends along a piece of wit and wisdom attributed to writer Ben Stein:
“Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured, but not everyone must prove they are a citizen. And now any of those who refuse, or are unable, to prove they are citizens will receive free insurance paid for by those who are forced to buy insurance because they are citizens.”
That’s Obamaism, brother!
Now, lawyers get a conscience
Donald Sterling, the Los Angeles Clippers owner caught on tape disparaging black people, wants to fight NBA attempts to force him to sell the team, but reportedly can’t find a law firm to represent him. At least eight are said to have rejected him as too toxic.
Hmmm. Murderers, terrorists and Ponzi schemers never seem to have trouble finding lawyers.