Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s popularity among New Yorkers has declined, but he says his legacy is low crime, a strengthened economy and rising test scores.
Rising test scores?
Remember this, Mayor Mike?
After years of soaring test results, the number of city students who can read and do math at grade level plummeted on tougher-to-pass state exams.
Only 54% of third- through eighth-graders passed state math tests this year, compared with 82% the year before, a shocking decline of 28 percentage points.
Reading scores dropped 27 points, from 69% in the 2008-2009 school year to only 42%.
The declines, which erase nearly all the gains city kids have made in the past four years, come in the wake of a state-commissioned study that found the high-stakes exams had become easier to pass.
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This year, the state raised the passing score for the exams and made the math test less predictable and added more material. The result was a stunning drop in how many city students are proficient in math and English. Next year, officials say, the exams will get even tougher.
Special ed students and children learning English saw the steepest drops and the city's already disturbing achievement gap widened, after signs it had been closing in some grades.
The gap in pass rates between black and white students in math doubled to 34 percentage points from 17 last year. On the reading exams, the difference widened to 32 percentage points from 22.
Plummeting test scores and increased achievement gap for black and Hispanic students - that's the mayor's legacy on education.
As for an improving city economy, that's just as absurd.
Higher homeless rate than before he became mayor, largest gap between rich and poor in the city since the Gilded Age, tax cuts for rich people, service cuts for middle and working class people - that's the mayor's legacy on the city economy.
How come none of this legacy made it into the Times article about how much Mayor Mike loves himself and his legacy?
The big lies: low crime and rising test scores. What a brazen lack of decency from this little tyrant!! It's way past time for this rich little runt to go back to whatever craphole he crawled out of back in Boston.
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