Bloomberg and Klein Claim RttT Award "Vindicates" Their Education Policies

Seriously, that's what they said in a statement:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein said in a statement that the awarding of the money was a vindication of their efforts.

“This win is a testament to what we’ve accomplished in the New York City schools over the last eight years, and we are going to work with our teachers and schools to raise the bar once again,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement.

Chancellor Klein said: “Race to the Top has been a tremendous catalyst for precisely the kind of education reform we’ve supported and implemented in New York City; now it is up to all of us to live up to this commitment and continue the important work that got us here.”

They used phonied test scores to rave about how they had closed the achievement gap between white and Asian students and black and Hispanic students.

That gap stands larger now than before they took over.

Same for the gap between students in schools with higher income populations and students in schools with lower income populations.

Meantime they close hundreds of schools, reopen them as charters but only take the cream of the crop into those schools while shunting the rest off to neighborhood schools which themselves are eventually declared "failing" and closed.

And the three card monte game of school closures continues ad infinitum, though somehow Bloomberg and Klein, now running the system for almost ten years, never take the blame for any of it.

And Bloomberg and Klein say the failed policies they have been pushing have been vindicated by their education deform cronies from the Gates and the Broad Foundations in the Obama administration handing them money for more of the same failed reforms?

Please.

The RttT boondoggle will be about as successful in education as Obama's HAMP mortgage plan has been at saving people from foreclosure.

Or his stimulus package has been at reducing the unemployment and underemployment rates.

Or his economic team has been at getting the economy revving again.

Or his foreign policy team has been at winding down the war in Afghanistan (now the longest war in U.S. history - even longer than Vietnam.)

Seriously, when the president has failed at almost everything else he has touched policy-wise, why should it be any different in education?

But the shills in the papers and on TV and at the ed deform blogs will wave their pom-poms and parrot the Bloomberg/Klein press releases.

Just wait until all of the children unfortunate enough to be in school during the Bush/Obama/Bloomberg years come of age.