Friday, August 27, 2010

Chancellor Joel Klein Refuses To Face The Truth. All His Efforts To Narrow The Racial & Income Achievement Gap Has Failed.




Chancellor Joel Klein is simply amazing. Despite what the facts are he manages to spin them to show how well he and the mayorlife, Michael Bloomberg have improved education in the New York City Public Schools. What a joke and a lie to boot. Now despite all the data coming out of the 2010 tests the Chancellor falsely claims that that he has made progress. Progress? according to the Daily News the income achievement gap actually widened! Who is lying to who? Maybe we should be calling Joel Klein the lying Chancellor.

Even after the State data showed that New York City failed in closing the academic achievement gap and the DOE claims being universally panned by education critics and supporters alike, the lying Chancellor wrote an article for the New York Post that was addressed to parents about how they have raised the academic standards and closed the achievement gap. Unbelievable! Of course he really cannot use the New York State or Federal data to show proof of his claims but he does not care. As Joseph Goebbels stated "If you tell a big lie often enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it". When the data does not support your case either ignore it or blame it on others. Remember, it was back in March of 2009 when the lying Chancellor said this:

he New York City schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein who introduced the findings at the National Press Club in Washington, said the study vindicated the idea that the root cause of test-score disparities was not poverty or family circumstances, but subpar teachers and principals.

Yes, he blamed it on the teachers and principals not on his failed education policy. The New York Times included the Chancellor's statement in their write up of the McKinsey & Company report. I previously wrote about this before here. Well, as far as I am concerned, the Bloomberg/Klein education policy is a failure and no matter how much spinning of statistics and lying comes out of the two non-educators, the bottom line is the lying Chancellor deserves a failing grade on his report card. Furthermore, evidence in his failure to close the achievement gap is shown in the latest composite ACT data, published by Anna Phillips of Gotham News which show that the increase in ACT scores came primarily from White and Asian students while Black and Hispanic students showed little change since 2005. In fact, Black and Hispanic students failed the college-readiness benchmarks in all four academic areas that serve to determine whether a student needs remedial college courses. This is the same as in 2005 and shows no progress at all. In all fairness I must add that my fellow blogger JD2718 rightly questioned the student sample of the composite ACT test and the conclusions based on that sample for New York City students and is a must read here. However, this article is about the achievement gap and not about testing protocols. Therefore, the composite ACT test still is valid for this purpose and shows the large achievement gap and even demostrates a widening of it in the last five years.

Since the New York State RTTT requires evaluations based upon student testing, then based upon the terrible 2010 results, the Chancellor's report card is a "F" and he should be rated "ineffective".

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