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According to Mayor Bloomberg, under his leadership New York City’s schools have experienced rising graduation rates, soaring test scores, and unprecedented accountability. In blog posts, newspaper op/eds, and research papers, his critics have charged that the evidence doesn’t support those claims. Now, those critics have collected their analysis in a single volume.

The book, bluntly titled “NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers, and Policymakers Need to Know,” is intended to “to ignite a genuine debate and dialogue about the future of the New York City public school system,” according to the introduction by Diane Ravitch, the education historian and Bloomberg foe.

Published in conjunction with Class Size Matters, the nonprofit run by activist parent Leonie Haimson, the book contains essays by 17 scholars, advocates, and politicians who have long contended that the city is overstating how much schools have improved under the current administration. In some cases, the essayists argue that the city schools have actually deteriorated in the last seven years.

Contributors include Steve Sanders, the original architect of the mayoral control law; Teachers College professor Aaron Pallas, also known as Skoolboy on this site; and New York City NAACP president Hazel Dukes, in addition to Ravitch, Haimson, and others.All of the contributors have been outspoken in their criticism of the city schools leadership. But none of the essays has appeared in its entirety elsewhere, Haimson said, and several are completely original. 

Many of the topics covered in the 19 essays have also been reported about here on GothamSchools, such as discharge rates from high schools, civil rights for students, and the disjuncture between state test scores and national test results.

The book is available as a free download or a hard copy for $12 at Lulu.com, the self-publishing site. It will also be for sale on Amazon by the end of next week, according to Haimson.