Submitted by Abraham Samuels, Jul 12, 2007 09:11

In addition to putting the issue of closing the achievement gap in perspective, this essay by Fred Smith shows the lengths to which New York State and New York City will go to make themselves look good. This seems to be their primary objective--while they issue platitudes about the importance of well-trained teachers, higher standards and raising the achievement of all students in reading and math.

In fact, this piece actually gives a clear example of how the State Education Department (Chancellor Bennett and Commissioner Mills) not only misrepresents student performance statewide, but also how they abet the City in doing the same thing. While the city boldly makes invalid comparisons--that the state clearly warns against--the state stands by and lets Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein get away with these false comparisons. Maybe that's because the higher the city's results go--the more they raise the overall statewide results.

Bravo to the Sun for shining a light on the sham reporting of New York's test results and the hacks who work hand-in-hand to perpetuate them on the backs of 1.2 million students.

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