Mayor Michael Bloomberg and senior education officials spent Monday visiting the 22 New York City public schools that were in the state's top 25 performing schools on the recent Common Core exams. The majority of these high-performing schools either had selective admissions policies or were located in wealthy neighborhoods. However, as The New York Times reported, small schools opened under Mayor Bloomberg, which included schools in low-income minority neighborhoods, were still represented on this high-performing list:
On the whole, city students outperformed those in other large districts in the state, and the city's passing rate nearly matched the state's, even though the city has many students who are poor or not native English speakers.
"We have been closing the gap with the state for a few years now, and that just has not happened, to the best of my knowledge, in any other state where there are a lot of big cities," Mr. Bloomberg said.
