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"...The leader of this rear-guard action is Diane Ravitch, a professor at New York University who was an assistant secretary of education in the administration of George H.W. Bush. She's the education world's very own Whittaker Chambers, the famous communist turned strident anti-communist of the 1940s. Ravitch moved the other way, from right to left, where she now uses phony empiricism to rationalize almost every tired argument offered by teachers unions..."

"Three years ago, in a New York Times article detailing her bid to become head of the American Federation of Teachers union, Randi Weingarten boasted that despite my calls for "radical reform" to New York City's school system, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and I had achieved only "incremental" change. It seemed like a strange thing to crow about, but she did have something of a point. New York over the past nine years has experienced what Robert Schwartz, the dean of Harvard's education school, has described as "the most dramatic and thoughtful set of large-scale reforms going on anywhere in the country," resulting in gains such as a nearly 20-point jump in graduation rates. But the city's school system is still not remotely where it needs to be. "

Long before the Bloomberg administration, districts offered school choice. But in recent years the process has intensified. The reform movement has created an educational marketplace that presses schools to compete for students. This is good for the students selected for the strongest schools but not so good for children left behind and grouped as the weakest.

During a hearing in June, as the city's Panel for Educational Policy prepared to move on a plan to "co-locate" 22 charter schools in public-school buildings, most of the audience knew what would happen: Parents would yell, teachers would plead and union members would attack the Bloomberg administration. And then, after hours of testimony in the tightly packed auditorium of a Prospect Heights high school, the plan would pass as expected.

According to data recently released by the city, students graduating from the high schools created under Bloomberg are less prepared for college than the students in older schools with similar populations. In fact, on average, older schools outperform newer ones by 40%. Even though students in newer schools are less prepared for college, they are being awarded classroom credits more quickly. Credit accumulation matters for Bloomberg's high-stakes accountability formulas. College-readiness does not.

At a press conference earlier this week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the city's 2011 test results. Wall Street Journal reporter Lisa Fleisher, who was on the scene, tweeted Mayor Bloomberg's remarks. According to Fleisher, the mayor claimed that there was a "dramatic difference" between his city's testing progress between 2010 and 2011, as compared with the rest of state.

Five months after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg outlined a plan to give principals more autonomy to run their schools, the city imposed what would be the first of five consecutive cuts to the schools' budgets. To make ends meet, principals have trimmed after-school programs, shrunk their support staffs and tightened their schools' use of things like printing paper, markers and Post-it notes. They have dismissed coaches who used to help teachers prepare for their lessons, and teachers whose salaries they could no longer pay.

Annual allegations of test-tampering and grade-changing by educators have more than tripled since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took control of New York City's school system, outpacing a broader increase in complaints of adult misconduct in schools during the same period, according to the special commissioner of investigation.

Nearly 780 employees of the New York City Education Department will lose their jobs by October, in the largest single-agency layoff since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took office in 2002.

Public education has never been so divided, between those like Dr. Tisch, Commissioner John B. King Jr. and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg who support the Obama administration's signature Race to the Top initiative and its emphasis on standardized tests and charter schools; and dissenters on the board, who call it a Race to the Bottom and put their faith in teachers as well as traditional public schools. The Race to the Bottom folks warn that the supposedly free fellows come at a stiff political price.

Kelly Fischer, one of the plaintiffs in a special-education discrimination lawsuit against the state of Louisiana, says last year she was discouraged by a number of charter schools from enrolling her now 10-year-old son Noah, who is blind, autistic and eats from a tube. While charters are free from many of the bureaucratic constraints of traditional districts, such as union contracts and limits on the length of school days, they must follow U.S. antidiscrimination laws, just like other public schools.

Soon after he gained control of the city's public schools, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pushed to shut down enormous high schools and replace them with smaller schools. Now, his administration is pledging to do the same with middle schools, aiming to open at least 50 more in the next two years.

The disparate nature of the cuts - the biggest layoffs at any agency in the Bloomberg era - became apparent yesterday, when officials gave Local 372, which represents nonprofessional school employees, a detailed hit list. Under the plan, District 5 in Harlem and District 6 in Washington Heights will lose almost 8% of their school aides, parent coordinators and community workers - 77 out of a total of 998. At the same time, only five of 942 similar workers in Staten Island's District 31 - less than 1% - will get pink slips.

It should surprise no one that only 34 percent of New Yorkers approve of Michael Bloomberg's education policies, the policy area within which the Mayor most hoped to create a legacy. The Mayor not only introduced numerous questionable initiatives- ranging from school closings, to preferential treatment of charter schools, to attempts to rate teacher performance based on student test scores-he did so with an arrogant disregard not only for the most experienced teachers and administrators in the system, but of parents and community leaders and elected officials who tried to make their voices heard in matters of educational policy.

When talk-show host Oprah Winfrey handed a $1 million check last September to the principal of New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy, 200 students watched the broadcast from a church and celebrated with a brass band.

New York City has plans to close 22 "failing" schools, taking the view that if those schools can't do right by their students, they shouldn't continue to exist. Because students deserve better, and if you don't agree with what Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his assorted education chancellors think is best, then you don't care about kids.

Many in the forefront of what is called the education reform movement - like Bill Gates, the philanthropist, and Arne Duncan, the nation's education secretary - have attended private schools with small class sizes. Others, like New York's mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, and its former schools chancellor Joel I. Klein have sent their children to private schools with small class sizes. Imagine if the poorest public school children had the same opportunity. That is what has been happening for several years in this urban district of 130,000 students. Using state money and federal stimulus dollars, San Diego has held class size to 17 in kindergarten through second grade at its 30 poorest schools.

When Hector Leon arrived at Urban Assembly Academy of History and Citizenship for Young Men four years ago to be the high school's college advisor, he found himself in an "emergency" situation. "When I got there, there was no college office in place," said Leon, 41. "It's a difficult position, because you have a lot of need in the population. I mean, you become a brother, father, uncle." Last week, Leon became one of the nearly 700 school employees laid off in a sweeping single-agency cut, the largest since Mayor Bloomberg took office. His position was eliminated during a crucial time when students start working on their college applications and financial aid packages. Leon was helping one student apply to Harvard and Yale.

Mayor Bloomberg likes to boast of the "gains" made in city schools during his tenure, but the test scores and graduation rates he cites have long been suspect. Want to know why? As Susan Edelman reported in last Sunday's Post, the folks at struggling Washington Irving HS in Manhattan apply a major, um, fudge factor.