Why Doesn't The News Media Challenge Mayor Bloomberg's False Claim That He Has Reduced The Student Achievement Gap By 50%?

In an "Education Now" meeting in Washington D.C. the Mayor falsely boasted that his Administration has reduced the student achievement gap by an astounding 50% and that proves that "Mayoral Control" is on the right path to improve the New York City Schools. However, except for various education critics, the news media accepted the Mayor's false conclusions without question.

The Mayor falsely claimed that under his Administration the student achievement gap between "Asians & Whites" and "Blacks & Latinos" was narrowed by 50%. Yet not one newspaper or local network reporter questioned the Mayor's absolutely false and self-serving statement. Instead, the news media simply reported the Mayor's false boasts without checking it for accuracy. Is this simply incompetent journalism, or something much worse? Like being the Mayor's propaganda mouthpiece?

• The reality about the student achievement gap is that it has hardly budged since the Mayor took office. In the Gotham Schools Community, Aaron Pallas, in his "Emperor's New Close" showed what the real changes were between the achievement gap for "Asians & Whites" and "Blacks & Latinos". Since 2003 Mr. Pallas found that using the New York State tests for grades three through eight that the achievement gap narrowed by just 1% not 50%. Maybe the Mayor was talking about the "gold standard of the federal NAEP test" that tested fourth through eighth graders? Sorry, Mr. Pallas found that the achievement gap between "Asians & Whites" and "Blacks & Latinos" actually increased by 3%! What about the high school students? I wrote a column that showed the large and growing larger racial achievement gap in SAT scores between the two groups since 2007 Here. Worse, the racial achievement gap is wider in New York City than in other large cities and in some cases actually doubled Here. Unbelievable, that the Mayor can blatantly lie and not be challenged by the news media.

I guess that the news media rather bash and shame teachers than print the disturbing truth that the Mayor's education policies are failing, just like their media journalists who fail to independently investigate the false claims by the Mayor and his poodle the Chancellor.