You don’t know what it means because you never worked in the education community.
You can’t know what real involvement is unless you become really involved.

2. what would be in a meaningful and relevant curriculum?  (i suspect that there aren’t too many people who are out there arguing that we need meaningless and irrelevant curricula.)

3. i don’t know what this means.  are you just saying “hire more teachers”? or lay off fewer teachers? how many is enough? is there a specific policy that you have in mind?

4. i don’t know what this means.  what’s a “learning community”?  what kind of professional support are you talking about?  how much money, and for what specific purposes?

5. less emphasis — but retaining “some” emphasis?  how much emphasis?

6. the merits are complicated and debatable, but at least this point is clear.

7. i don’t know what this means. what’s “real” involvement?  what’s “unreal” about about current parental involvement?

you know, i agree with you entirely about the tests.  but we are where we are.  there is a widely shared perception — and it also seems to be shared by almost everybody who posts here — that students are not coming out of the NYC schools with the kind of skills we believe they should have.  politicians and the public have decided that something should be done to fix this problem, and the tests are probably here to stay. 

Neither Bloomberg or Walcott have a clue what
is happening in the schools right in front of them, yet they are going
to be bolder?

For Bloomberg’s next act, he should dive right into medicine and try to cure cancer with an axe.

The way Middle School is structured, isolated (for the most part) from it’s elementary roots and high school future has never made sense.  And, that’s why parents have begged for K-8.  What Parents Want:  An investment in Traditional Public School Pre-K & Early Childhood Educaiton, K-8 w/Small Class Sizes + no high stakes testing. 

I wish this was good news… 

In addition, Bloomberg plans to move over 1,000,000 million New York City school children out of New York City and replace them with children from higher scoring areas outside the city.

Bloomberg, fresh from perjuring himself on the stand in the John Haggerty Jr. corruption trial, said that he has had enough of falling test scores, funky graduation rates, lazy teachers and children who “just won’t learn…”

“It’s time we bring in some children who will!” the mayor said as both Walcott and Polakow-Suransky nodded solemnly in agreement.

Bloomberg said New York City will close half of it’s schools beginning in 2012 and will complete the entire system closure by the time he leaves office on December 31, 2013.

New York City school children who are currently deemed “failures” will be sent to “re-education centers”  jointly run by Pearson Education, McGraw-Hill and News Corporation.

Pearson, McGraw-Hill and News Corp will received $286 million in tax incentives to run the centers and another $550 million in school capital funds.

New York City’s 75,000 teachers will all be fired and put on a “DO NOT HIRE” list that will be circulated to school districts all around the country.

In addition, they will be blacklisted from working in any corporation that trades on Wall Street.
The operation is being dubbed “FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION
IN NYC” after a favored saying by the mayor’s friend and charter school
operator, Geoffrey Canada.

“We are falling behind as a nation, falling behind as a city, and frankly, the education system is to blame,” Bloomberg told reporters.  “The kids, the teachers – they’re just no damned good.  And failure, well, it’s just not an option for us anymore.”The mayor said once the FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION FOR NYC operation is complete, New York City will have one of the finest school systems and most educated populaces in the nation.”We’re hoping to get kids in here from Scarsdale, Chappaqua, those kinds of places.  We think that will really give us a leg up on competing with the rest of the nation and the world.”