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Elizabeth is doing the first shift at today’s Assembly Education Committee mayoral control hearing in Manhattan, so I don’t know what Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is testifying right now. But if he’s echoing what Mayor Bloomberg said this morning during his weekly radio show, Klein is suggesting that New Yorkers will take to the streets if state lawmakers allow mayoral control to expire at the end of June.

From Bloomberg’s mayoral control jeremiad, according to a report posted on the Daily Politics blog:

“My assumption is there will be a bill called mayoral control passed by the Legislature,” the mayor continued. “I think that the, if they didn’t do that, I think that there’d be riots in the streets, given what’s the improvement. I mean, parents have choices. For the first time we’re funding all the schools equally.”

… “So I think they will pass a bill. The question is, does it have mayoral control? Mayoral control is control. Control is you decide. …”

Nearly 60 percent of New Yorkers support continuing mayoral control, according to a recent poll.

If the graduation requirements in effect for this year’s ninth-graders had applied to students who entered high school five years ago, the city’s graduation rate would be just 37 percent.

The new, more stringent requirements could cause the city’s graduation rate, which has only recently topped 50 percent, to plummet, advocates say in a new report (pdf) about what they call a “looming crisis” for the city schools. The report, prepared by the Coalition for Educational Justice, a parent group, details how poor and minority students could suffer most under the new rules.

Beginning with this year’s freshman class, all high school students will have to earn what’s called a Regents diploma by scoring 65 or higher on five different state exams. Until now, the state has allowed students who scored between 55 and 64 on any of the tests to graduate with a less rigorous diploma. The less rigorous diploma, called a local diploma, has been the most common type earned by city students.

At a press conference on the steps of the Department of Education this morning, CEJ and dozens of other advocates called for an emergency working group of state and city education officials to focus on how to help schools where few students are on track to graduate with Regents diplomas. (more…)