Mayor Bloomberg is sounding off again. The Mayor who believes he is always right and smarter than everyone else is insulting others even when chinks in his armor are beginning to show. The Mayor’s signature accomplishment is supposed to be the improvement in the schools. Now the evidence shows that this improvement was overhyped. What many who have gone through school know as grade inflation has been applied to the school system. The Mayor and Chancellor Klein promoted improved test scores in time for the Mayor’s re-election in 2009 but it appears those scores were partly due to an easier test and ones that were nearly the same year after year so test prep was easier. The fuzzy math belies much of the progress the Mayor has made in the schools, where the curriculum has changed to focus on test prep. The Mayor who pledged to be accountable on education has yet to take responsibility for this. New Yorkers lost our chance to hold him accountable at the polls, but still need to do so. In fact he keeps spreading his gospel across the country. Other fuzzy math includes some crime statistics where it was recently shown that while major crimes have gone down, some minor classes of crimes have gone up but are not counted in crime statistics. Finally, the financial wizard Mayor cannot seem to get himself out of the CityTime contract which has ballooned to nearly one billion dollars.
All of this comes at a time when the Mayor lobbed personal insults at some of the new Members of Congress, about their intelligence and lack of international knowledge, saying they may not have passports. While I may agree that some the new Republicans are wrong on a lot of points, picking a fight right now is bad for the City. Especially when it appears that two of those that won in New York while they may need some policy education have done significant international travelling. While the Mayor is travelling the world and country and hoping to start a new third party, it seems things are not as he wants to make them seem in New York. His false arrogance can only make things worse. Perhaps he should admit some misjudgements at home and fix things here, before insulting others. Making the most money does not always make you right, a little humility and reflection would help us all.
