Today, NYS's Education Department announced the results of standardized testing of NY's children. The results show that Mayor Bloomberg picked a good day to be out of town. He's in Los Angeles singing the praises of Mayoral control of the schools. The news here is not so good.

The scores that can fairly be compared are those of last years' 4th and 8th graders with those of the previous year. The percentage of 4th graders who performed at or above the standards in English dropped somewhat from 59.5% to 58.9%. The per cent of 8th graders reading at or above the standards increased from 32.8% to 36.6% over last year. Most alarming, there was a 50% increase in the number of children reading at the lowest level and a comparable (or even larger) decrease in the number of children reading at the highest level. This may mean that we're losing our better students and increasing the number who are failing completely.

While, the Daily News quotes State Regents Board Member (and Poverty Commissioner) Meryl Tisch as pleased with the results ("New York Rocks") http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/454421p-382443c.html parents should not be. Years of rigid Mayoral control, lockstep curriculum and ceaseless test-prep are not helping our children learn.

Another sign that Bloomberg/Klein school control has had some undesirable effects was reported by parent activist Leonie Haimson who is the principal of classsizematters org. "(A)lmost 8500 classes were so large after the first week of school that they violated the UFT contract; 30% more than last year at this time. Most of these classes are in high schools, meaning that they contained 35 students or more. Yet 1500 of these classes were in elementary and middle schools, five times the number last year."

Maybe the Mayor should stay in California. (Thanks www.edwize.org -- the UFT blog -- for posting on this quickly. Those interested should go there, read their story and follow the links. )

To read the full report see the NYS Ed. Dept. http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/irts/ela-math/ela-06/districts/2006elacounty.h... . The NYC data is set out in the middle of the report, county-by-county with a special section for those troubled schools in the "chancellor's district."