Dennis Walcott's Whiny Call To The Times

The boys and girls at Tweed and City Hall sure love to dole out the abuse and criticism to others, especially teachers, but whenever they're on the other end of that kind of thing, boy do they get whiny:

To wit, both Chancellor Walcott and Mayor Bloomberg getting all whiny and sad over recent criticism from some Democratic mayoral candidates:

In unusually caustic terms, Mr. Walcott said he was “appalled” by the remarks of five Democrats at a forum on Saturday, in which the candidates denounced Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s focus on test scores, charter schools and the closing of low-performing schools. 

Mr. Walcott called The New York Times on Monday to express his frustration after he had read a transcript of what was said at the forum, which was sponsored by the United Federation of Teachers

Calling their words “unconscionable,” Mr. Walcott accused the candidates of harming the reputation of Education Department employees by questioning gains in test scores during Mr. Bloomberg’s 11-year tenure. 

“They are either not aware of what’s going on or want to misstate the facts,” Mr. Walcott said. 

...

Mr. Bloomberg also weighed in on Monday, saying the candidates ran the risk of bringing chaos to the city’s school system.

“If the next mayor really is serious about kowtowing to demands from some radicals in a union,” he said during a news conference in Brooklyn, “then this city does not have a future.”

Why shouldn't we question the mayor's claims of test score gains?

As the NY Times pointed out back in 2010:

Two years ago, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, testified before Congress about the city’s impressive progress in closing the gulf in performance between minority and white children. The gains were historic, all but unheard of in recent decades.

“Over the past six years, we’ve done everything possible to narrow the achievement gap — and we have,” Mr. Bloomberg testified. “In some cases, we’ve reduced it by half.”

“We are closing the shameful achievement gap faster than ever,” the mayor said again in 2009, as city reading scores — now acknowledged as the height of a test score bubble — showed nearly 70 percent of children had met state standards.

When results from the 2010 tests, which state officials said presented a more accurate portrayal of students’ abilities, were released last month, they came as a blow to the legacy of the mayor and the chancellor, as passing rates dropped by more than 25 percentage points on most tests. But the most painful part might well have been the evaporation of one of their signature accomplishments: the closing of the racial achievement gap.

Among the students in the city’s third through eighth grades, 40 percent of black students and 46 percent of Hispanic students met state standards in math, compared with 75 percent of white students and 82 percent of Asian students. In English, 33 percent of black students and 34 percent of Hispanic students are now proficient, compared with 64 percent among whites and Asians.

“The claims were based on some bad information,” said Michael J. Petrilli, a vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a research group that studies education policy. “On achievement, the story in New York City is of some modest progress, but not the miracle that the mayor and the chancellor would like to claim.” 

These are the scores as they now exist on the books - the achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and white and Asian students is back where it was when Bloomberg and Klein took over.

Bloomberg and Klein claimed historic gains on test scores in 2008 - those claims were based on inflated scores that the Bloomberg and Klein knew were inflated.

Nonetheless they rode those scores to Bloomberg's third term, claiming historic progress in education when the reality was, little-to-no progress had been made despite all the reorganizations and changes to policy.

Walcott can whine all he wants about it being unfair that his and his boss's education legacies areare under attack.

Bloomberg is on record lying about the scores back in 2009 when he was running for his third term.

Nothing he or his Tweed minions say now can be taken at face value - and that includes what they say or release about the test scores.