If Campaign Ads Told the Truth

Yes, I know it will never happen. But if Bloomberg put out a truthful campaign brochure on his education record, it would look quite different than the swamp of paper currently clogging everyone's snail mailbox.

Bloomberg--Change You Can Fudge with Data.

Here are some of Mayor Mike's Education Accomplishments:

• Kept class sizes from growing much larger, despite massive cash infusions from the CFE lawsuit.
• Brought pride to the parents of even the worst students by dumbing down tests to the point that an amoeba could pass them.
• Used those tests to promote more students than ever despite an end to social promotion.
• Raised teacher salaries to the point where they are a mere 40% less than some suburbs.
• Ensured that few teachers would earn those salaries by increasing the rubber room and ATR pools.
• Increased graduation rates through innovative programs such as "seat time" and just not counting a whole lot of kids who don't return to school.
• Spent 80 million on a data collection system that virtually no teacher actually uses other than the nightly log on to prove he/she uses it.
• Spent another 200 million to close schools and pay teachers to be permanent subs.
• His chancellor, Joel Klein, imposed a hiring freeze until those subs are placed, after implying that these subs are lazy and incompetent.
• Created many charter schools by allowing them, in a Blob like fashion, to eat up space that could be used to alleviate overcrowding in regular public schools.
• Did away with wasteful and time consuming nuisances such as parental input and teacher involvement.
• Eva Moscowitz.
• Ditto Joel Klein.

Can we afford not to give Michael Bloomberg another term? Probably, but he can afford to buy it anyway. So Vote to Re-Elect the Mayor. If he can't fix it, he can fudge it.