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The Bloomberg and Thompson campaigns spent the afternoon jealously guarding their claims to having ended social promotion, though whether either candidate has ended the practice is debatable.

Bloomberg campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson led the attack this afternoon, saying that as president of the Board of Education Bill Thompson, currently the city’s comptroller, failed to end social promotion. Broadly defined, social promotions means that students are bumped from one grade to the next irrespective of academic problems.

Thompson’s campaign shot back, defending the mayoral hopeful. “Bill Thompson was at the forefront of ending social promotion long before Mike Bloomberg decided to claim this initiative as his own,” read an email from the campaign.

In 1999, when Thompson was president of the Board of Education, he did vote for a measure that forced students in grades 3-8 who had low test scores, poor grades, and abysmal attendance to take summer school or repeat a grade. (more…)

One mayoral hopeful — the city’s current mayor — will be conspicuously absent from a candidates’ debate tonight due to a scheduling conflict.

That leaves him conveniently free to avoid questions about “aggressive policing in city schools,” which is one of the topics slated to be discussed at tonight’s debate, according to a press release put out by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the event’s co-host.

Instead, Bloomberg will be attending the National Night Out Against Crime, according to campaign spokeswoman Silvia Alvarez. Rather than trading talking points with his opponents, the mayor will spent all evening traveling to different precincts throughout the five boroughs to speak about crime and drug use prevention. Bloomberg has been an outspoken advocate for tighter gun control laws and is a member of the national coalition Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

“It’s a conflict of schedules for the mayor,” Alvarez said.

An NYCLU press release states: “Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign has not responded to repeated invitations from the civil rights community via mail, email and phone.”

Candidates Comptroller Bill Thompson, City Councilman Tony Avella, the Rev. Billy Talen, and Roland Rogers will be there.

Update: The NYCLU has decided to postpone the event. “We are postponing tonight’s Mayoral Candidates Civil Rights Forum due to the unavailability of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Comptroller Bill Thompson.  We are working to reschedule for a time that the candidates for mayor will be able to attend the forum.”

Tony Avella, the underdog mayoral candidate, doesn’t want to be left out of the fight that’s brewing between Mayor Bloomberg and Comptroller William Thompson, Avella’s competition for the Democratic nomination.

In an exclusive interview with GothamSchools, Avella said he’s the reason that Comptroller William Thompson has taken to calling for Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to be fired. ”He’s now copying me because he’s now seeing that I’m — my campaign is getting some attention because of my stance when it relates to education,” Avella said. Avella’s campaign issued a press release accusing Thompson of flip-flopping last week, when Thompson first said he would fire Klein.

Avella also echoed the mayor’s criticism of Thompson’s education record. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t see how he could ever run for mayor given that everybody knows how bad the Board of Education was,” Avella said in the interview. Thompson was the president of the Board of Education from 1996 to 2001.

For the second day in a row, the city’s comptroller has released an audit questioning the validity of the city’s education data. And for the second day in a row, political jockeying initially overshadowed the report’s content.

At a press conference this morning, Comptroller Bill Thompson, who is running for mayor, said the audit of testing oversight revealed that the Department of Education had allowed “an environment ripe for cheating.” ”We found that the Department of Education has engaged in sloppy and unprofessional practices that encourage cheating and data manipulation,” he said.

But the report did not find new instances of cheating.

The audit focuses on the role played by testing monitors in overseeing the math and English Language Arts, or ELA, tests given to elementary school students in 2008. These monitors, employed by the DOE, make unannounced visits to schools on testing days to ensure that protocols are being followed. Thompson’s audit deems the monitoring system “inadequate.”

The report suggests that the DOE is not thoroughly monitoring its monitors. (more…)

The accelerating 2009 mayoral campaign is distracting from real information inside an audit of city graduation rates released by the city comptroller’s office today. In fact, the audit is neither as damning as Bill Thompson Jr., the comptroller and mayoral hopeful, is claiming — nor as unequivocally rosy as the Bloomberg administration says.

Thompson said the audit suggests that principals and teachers responded to pressure to raise graduation rates by falsifying student records. “The New York City Department of Education has become the Enron of American education, showing the gains and hiding the losses,” he said at a press conference today.

But the audit found no evidence of tampering. Thompson’s declaration about fudging numbers came in remarks to reporters, not the official audit. “Is it just about sloppy bookkeeping or sloppy record-keeping? I don’t think so,” he said. He added, “This is a case where you can read between the lines.”

The audit also concludes that only 2 out of 206 randomly selected graduates, or 1%, did not deserve their diplomas. That’s quite different than the 10% figure being widely reported. Auditors initially challenged 19 graduates, or 10%, but threw out the concerns about 17 of them after school officials provided documents showing they earned their diplomas. And 11 of the 19 had overall grade averages of 80% or better, according to the audit. (more…)

(via GothamSchools' Flickr)

Democratic mayoral hopeful Bill Thompson said today that were he mayor, he would fire schools chancellor Joel Klein.

In a document released today by Thompson, the city’s Comptroller, a chart compares “Bill’s Vision” for the city’s schools to that of Mayor Bloomberg. Item two, below a promise to “Tell The Truth,” reads “Fire Joel Klein.”

“It’s time to bring back an educator to our schools who can lay out an educational vision that goes beyond taking tests and creates opportunities for our children to be successful in life,” the statement reads.

Thompson’s campaign spokesman, Jeff Simmons, said his candidate would appear on NY1′s “Road to City Hall” program at 7 p.m., reiterating this latest campaign promise.

The comptroller and Bloomberg have been feuding all day over an audit Thompson released today calling the city’s graduation rate intentionally inflated.

Before Thompson’s press conference could begin, the mayor’s campaign spokesman, Howard Wolfson, had already put out a statement crying politics and accusing Thompson, the city’s comptroller, of having his own “failed record on education.” (more…)

Rep. Anthony Weiner at today criticized Mayor Bloomberg's work in the public schools — and seemed like he might want to keep doing that straight into City Hall.

Anthony Weiner, the congressman who used to be a mayoral candidate and now is not so sure, sounded very much like he’s still running at the Assembly hearing in Brooklyn today on mayoral control.

In a brief interview with me, Weiner said that if he does run for mayor, education would be an important part of his case against the incumbent, Michael Bloomberg. “Arguably the most important part of the conversation,” he said. He then declared of Bloomberg, “I think his most profound success was gaining mayoral control, and his biggest failure is what he’s done with it.”

Weiner’s testimony to the Assembly members who held the hearing comprised might have been his most bristling criticism of Mayor Bloomberg’s education program yet — and was certainly a departure from previous declarations that he has made promising not to “undo” Bloomberg’s work but to “build on” it. He said the mayor has both failed to empower parents and teachers — and has not produced good academic results. “When you look at the only true thing that you know can’t be fudged, how we’re doing on the national test, the results are decidedly mixed, and that’s putting it favorably,” Weiner said.

The candidate-like posturing came as a surprise to some at the hearing, who said they assumed the congressman’s recent decision to hand back $60,000 in campaign contributions meant he was out of the race. One attendee, Damon Cabbagestalk Jr., a black reverend who has run for public advocate in the past, smacked Weiner on the back as he left the room at City Technical College and told him he hopes he runs for mayor. “You’ve got my vote,” Cabbagestalk said. (more…)

Yesterday I wrote about two politicians who showed up at the Queens mayoral control panel I moderated Tuesday. Rep. Anthony Weiner, who is running for mayor, declared with a swagger his desire to keep most of mayoral control preserved for himself, when he becomes mayor. (He is taking on Mayor Bloomberg and Comptroller Bill Thompson in the 2009 race.)

City Councilman Bill de Blasio, meanwhile, waited patiently in a question line and then declared his support for making school governance more democratic. De Blasio is running for public advocate.

Here’s video displaying each official’s testimony. First de Blasio, with the shushing of Weiner’s posse at about minute 3:30:

Then Weiner, who was surprised to be asked whether he had a question for the panel, rather than the reverse: (more…)