De Blasio Must Embrace Bloomberg's Goal to Measure Student Progress
When the full Regents exam data is released later this spring, it will likely show that only a quarter of New York City students are prepared for college. For minorities, these numbers are expected to be even lower.
In his campaign last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio often criticized then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg on his education policies, notably his administration's decision to grade all NYC schools on an A-to-F grading scale. In his first month as mayor, de Blasio has already scrapped this grading scale.
Now, de Blasio must act to find ways to improve student outcomes. According to a New York Times editorial, the mayor cannot abandon Bloomberg's mission to adequately assess New York City's public schools, as a means to help these schools improve:
The report cards can be improved and revised. But their basic purpose - providing a plausible system for measuring student progress - cannot be abandoned. If it is, city officials will never know how well students are doing until, on graduation day, they find that too many of them do not have the skills they need to go to college.
