Lost in the tidal wave of news surrounding the election was the announcement that State Education Commissioner Richard Mills will be leaving his post after thirteen years.

Mr. Mills began his tenure as a fresh breeze of reform, attempting to impose high academic standards on a sinking system. But he has morphed into a leading apologist for systematic test inflation that undermines educational policy at all levels.

Under Mills’ leadership early on, high school graduation requirements were tightened up to include a requirement that graduates pass five Regents exams. But what Mills failed to realize is that before we see positive results, many children will fail, bad news that Mills had no stomach to reveal. Education is not a one-year sprint, but a thirteen-year marathon. Children who have weak preparation in the lower grades cannot catch up overnight.

So passing scores on the Regents tests were lowered to 55. But even that was not enough. Faced with tens of thousands of failing students, Mills then allowed a systemic scandalous “dumbing down” of the tests.

Last year’s Integrated Math Regents test is a perfect example. A student who can manage 30 points out of 84 points, about 36% on the test, earns a passing grade of 65%! If a student can correctly answer just 10 of the 30 multiple choice questions (worth two points each), and randomly guess on the remaining 20, they have an even chance of passing the entire test on the strength of that alone. That assumes they get not a single point on the longer problem section, where points are awarded for partial answers, even wrong answers.

Despite this, the failure rates are still shocking.

The problem begins in the lower grades. The state, eager to meet the “annual yearly progress” goals of the federal “No Child Left Behind” law, has also inflated scores on the annual math and reading tests administered to children in grades three through eight.

We have been told now for years about the skyrocketing scores on these tests, particularly in math. This year 81% of students scored at or above grade level or “proficient” on the math tests. Then why can’t students then pass the Regents exam once they get to ninth grade, without the educrats having to fix the results?

The truth is that New York’s grade three through eight tests don’t measure real “proficiency,” the kind that translates into real world skills. These tests are dumbed down year after year to make the adults - superintendents, chancellors, school boards and even mayors - look better.

But the students don’t fare quite so well. No child becomes smarter when given an inflated grade.
In fourth grade math, the state tells us that 78% of students are proficient. But on the highly regarded National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test given in all 50 states, just 43% score “proficient.” In the fourth grade reading test, the state tells us that 68.6% are performing at grade level, as opposed to just 36% according to the NAEP.

The same performance gap holds for the eighth grade. While the federal test suggests that not even a third of students are proficient in reading, 32%, the state claims that nearly a half, 49.3% meet the standard. In math only 30% of eighth graders reach grade level on the NAEP, while the state tells us that 54% do.

Commissioner Mills, writing to the Regents nearly a year ago, tried to explain away this performance gap. “Given that NAEP and state tests, as well as the related standards, are prepared separately, it’s inevitable that national and state results will be different. In some states the difference is large, while it’s small in others. This presents an obvious question for the public and policy makers: which results are correct?”

Mr. Mills asserted that the State’s tests, resulting in among the widest gaps with the federal standard in the nation, are more accurate and goes on to give a list of reasons. These include the remarkable claim that “teachers and students perceive that stakes are high for performance on the New York tests and students are encouraged to do their best. There are no consequences to a school or a student from NAEP.” This is nonsense.

Tests are important. Education officials increasingly use them to make important public policy decisions. Just as we expect children not to copy answers from their neighbor’s paper, and teachers and principals not to alter test papers to make them look better, we must demand integrity from those at the state level who make up the tests, and the State Education Commissioner who is their boss. What has gone on in New York State is nothing less than systemic, institutional cheating.

Now is a good time to look at what was done in Massachusetts. Their education board raised standards, and aligned their tests with the federal yardstick. And there was some pain early on. But their strategy has paid off. Now Massachusetts posts the highest scores in the nation on the NAEP tests.

We need a State Education Commissioner who will put the interests of children first, even if it means that local educrats get some unpleasant news. We need a Commissioner who will emulate the Massachusetts model, one who will restore integrity to the Empire State’s compromised educational system, something Richard Mills never had the courage to do.

By Andrew Wolf

Residents of a certain age may remember the administration of the late Mayor Abraham D. Beame. Abe Beame was an accountant, who worked as Budget Director under Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr., before being tapped to run for Comptroller as Wagner’s running mate during his last term.

In 1965, Beame won a hard fought primary battle and won the nomination to become the Democratic candidate for mayor against Republican John V. Lindsay. He lost.

Four years later, Beame re-entered public life, running for Comptroller during Mayor Lindsay’s second term. When Lindsay declined to run for re-election in 1973, Beame again tried for the city’s top job, and, finally, was successful.

Abe Beame’s slogan was simple. “He Knows the Buck,” a reference to his skills as an accountant and the city’s top financial watchdog.

The trouble was that the affable Mr. Beame, much liked and respected, didn’t really know the buck. The truth is that during Lindsay’s final term, Beame watched silently as the mayor spent the city into oblivion. Once Mr. Beame took over, it was business as usual. Budgets were balanced through fiscal gimmicks and irresponsible borrowing. The result was the city’s financial crisis that brought us to the brink of bankruptcy.

Once the dust cleared, New York had many bitter pills to swallow. Enormous cutbacks and layoffs crippled the schools for a generation. All sorts of services were cut back on as the number of city employees plummeted. At the same time control of the city’s finances was surrendered to an “Emergency Financial Control Board” for a generation. Tax increases were imposed, resulting in more pain, and plunging the city into a desperate crisis of rising crime, housing abandonment, and the exodus of much of the city’s middle class.

Today we have a mayor who, similar to Mr. Beame, tells us of his legendary management and financial skills. This is the deceptive excuse Mr. Bloomberg used to convince the editorial boards and other opinion shapers to back his democracy-busting initiative to abandon the term limits overwhelmingly approved by City voters in two referenda.

We are told that only Mr. Bloomberg has the knowledge and expertise to lead us through these difficult times. He knows the buck, after all.

But evidence suggests that he doesn’t. New York is in much worse shape, we believe, because Mr. Bloomberg’s skills as a manager have been greatly exaggerated. In many ways he is today’s slicker, richer Abe Beame, but just as inept.

I note that the mayor voted, as a trustee of the city’s pension funds, just this past September to increase the fund’s investments in risky Hedge Funds. Shouldn’t he have been sounding the alarm over the impending global financial crisis? Truth is, that for all his money and influence, he was clueless about the further risks he was exposing current and former city employees to, when he okayed this risky investment of their hard-earned money.

The fact is that during the past seven “fat” years, Mr, Bloomberg, like Mayor Beame before him, has engaged in an unrestrained orgy of spending that has left us extraordinarily vulnerable to inevitable budget cuts, layoffs and new and higher taxes.

And as for management, let’s just look at our schools. Mayor Bloomberg has increased expenditures for education by 79%, over eight billion dollars a year, despite a decrease of 60,000 students. What have we gotten for this? Scores on national tests over the past six years have been flat. No progress. S.A.T. scores have actually declined.

Now teacher salaries have increased by an average of 42%, certainly a good thing. But what of the remaining 37% of the huge increase in education spending? Down a black hole of poor management by the administration of King Michael I, his imperial majesty.

Trouble is the King Mike may have the bucks, but he doesn’t know them any better than the hapless Abe Beame.

By Andrew Wolf

Shortly after I began writing a regular column for The New York Sun six-and-a-half years ago, the mayor was given control of the New York City public schools. During that period I have written around two hundred columns on the schools, most of which discuss various aspects of mayoral control.

I am by nature a skeptical fellow, and the story of the educational “reform” that has taken place since then has given me much to be skeptical about. Unfortunately, last month the Sun published its final issue, so now is as good a time as any to reflect on this remarkable story that I have followed since the beginning.

By the statistics, mayoral control has failed, as Diane Ravitch has previously pointed out in this space. Test results on the most reliable measures are flat, despite an unprecedented influx of funds – a 79% increase in the education budget in just six years.

But mayoral control has failed in a more profound way. Desperate to show “progress,” a laundry list of structural reforms has been implemented by the gang at the Tweed Courthouse. Most of these have to do with providing incentives to principals, teachers and students. If you want to believe that teachers will only do a good job if we give them the chance to earn an extra $3,000 bonus for higher test scores, than I have a bridge to sell you.

Most teachers I know desperately want to do a good job. Meeting with success makes the life of the teacher more rewarding. No small bonus, or even large bonus could ever replace that satisfaction. That is why they became teachers rather than, say, stockbrokers. Teachers are doing a bit better financially than they were in the past, but this is not an easy way to make a living.

The idea that students will be motivated by giving them cash prizes or, more perversely, cellular telephones that they aren’t allowed to bring to school with them, sends the wrong message. We have to imbue in our young people an appreciation for the value of learning – as a way to help them succeed financially, sure, but even more for the enrichment it gives to their lives.

The changes we need are the ones that have been ignored. We are following an empty curriculum that leaves even the brightest students woefully deficient in the sciences, history, geography, music and art.

We are training teachers to use methodologies, such as “balanced literacy,” that have been proven ineffective with the most at-risk students, while jettisoning strategies with much better track records and far more promise.

We have institutionalized a “fuzzy math” curriculum that leaves our students woefully deficient to meet the technical challenges they will face in the global economy of the twenty first century.

In trying to impose a “business model” on our schools, we have failed our children in a profound way. We then use the “creative accounting” of inflated test scores and never-ending test prep to “prove” that the schools are bringing “profits” for the huge investment in public capital that is being poured into them.
It is all an illusion, reinforced by a public relations army spending ten times more to sell their product us than the old Board of Education did.

If we have learned nothing else during the last few weeks, it is that the Bloombergian “business model” doesn’t even work in the business world. Why should we think that it works in the far more complicated world of education?

Ironically, greater gains were made during the years that Rudy Crew and Harold Levy ran the schools under the old Board of Education. If I had my druthers, I would let the current law sunset on June 30, 2009 and go back to the drawing board, building on the old system largely run by teachers and educators, rather than the Tweed “business model” of lawyers and MBAs.

ANDREW WOLF frequently wrote on topics related to Education for the much-missed New York Sun. He is Editor and Publisher of the Riverdale Review and Bronx Press Review, two community weekly newspapers published in The Bronx.

New York City is about to become a “banana republic,” ruled not by the will of the people, but rather by the will of one man, our “benevolent” dictator, King Michael Bloomberg.

Twice the voters mandated term limits for city elected officials. They spoke clearly and their desires were respected. As a result, some very fine public officials were forced to step down. And it must be pointed out that the current crop of City Council members, beneficiaries of the law and the mayor knew exactly the terms of their employment.
Earlier suggestions that the Council repeal term limits so that their members could run for a third term or beyond were called “disgusting,” by Mayor Bloomberg himself.

But now as his own clock winds down, King Mike is attempting what is nothing more than a Beer Hall Putsch, and the Beer Hall is the City Council chamber. Enlisting the pliable, gutless and morally bankrupt Council Speaker, Christine “Lap Dog” Quinn, the mayor is about to “steal” an illegal third term. No matter what you think of Bloomberg as mayor, you should fear this gambit, and resist it with every fiber in your being. Rules are rules and respect for the law must not be tampered with. Ever.

Let’s start with the premise that the mayor is the only person who has the ability to “save” the city during the financial crisis. This is the same argument made by Mayor Giuliani, somewhat more persuasively, after 9/11.

Certainly with smoke still rising from the site of the World Trade Center, daily updates in the body counts, and disarray in the financial markets, a real crisis was at hand. All Giuliani asked for was a few extra months. Yet the plan was dropped as cooler heads prevailed. In a democracy, no one man is indispensable.

Now the “Indispensable Emperor” wants an extra four years. As the old Mike Bloomberg would say, it’s “disgusting.”

Before we end democracy in New York, we should closely examine the record of Michael Bloomberg. Is he indispensable? No. In fact in my view he hasn’t even been a good mayor, and continuing him in office would be a disaster.

In a city where the town’s richest man serves as mayor, and the media is greatly compromised by his wealth and influence, sometimes all news appears good, even when it is not.
And there has been plenty of bad news in Bloomberg’s New York. Here’s the truth:

I certainly can’t blame the world financial crisis on King Mike. But everyone should understand that he has failed to prepare us for the uncertain times we face today. He has had no cogent policy to diversify the city’s economy, and now we will pay the price. And more than any person, he was uniquely positioned to see the fragile state of the financial markets, as the leading supplier of information to Wall Street.

When the dust clears, New York City will have tens of thousands fewer jobs in the financial sector, the best and most productive jobs in town, from the perspective of raising tax revenue. And those jobs are not coming back, no matter what King Mike does. This will lead to a glut of residential and office space, and further declining real estate values. Where was our fearless all-knowing leader when we needed someone to sound the alarm?

Because this is a world crisis, the tourist boom, fed by a cheap dollar will also end. Even as the stock markets declined, the dollar has made a comeback, regaining 15% of its value against the euro. In other words, good for you and me when we travel abroad, but not so good for Europeans who have been filling our high end retail stores, getting bargains courtesy of the exchange rate. Look for lots of empty hotel rooms here.

And the mayor - with the connivance of the City Council — has mismanaged the budget. Unlike Mayor Giuliani, King Mike hasn’t shown budgetary restraint, and now we will pay. He already increased property taxes by 18% after 9/11, failed to give us the 1% sales tax break promised a generation ago during an earlier budget crisis, and has new plans to raise property taxes now. Look for more taxes and deep cuts, and give blame where blame is due - right with the Imperial Mayor.

The World Trade Center site, Ground Zero, is still an empty hole. Whose fault is that? King Mike has been our ruler now for seven years. He should have been screaming for action. Now it is clear that even a memorial will not be completed even in time for the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 outrage. Another victory for the terrorists.

What of the mayor’s other “accomplishments?”

You will hear much talk of better schools. Where? Certainly not here in Riverdale, as every important indicator is way down. Our schools are now being run by unqualified, insensitive “instant principals,” whose loyalty is to King Mike and his Court Jester, Chancellor Joel Klein, and not to our children and our community.

Citywide, test scores key tests administered by those outside of New York are flat, even as the cost of running schools has increased by 79% and the number of students declined by 60,000. Amazingly, 5,000 extra teachers have disappeared into the system, but class size is as big as ever. The conclusion is inescapable. King Mike has botched the job.

The State Legislature, blessedly, rejected the burden that congestion pricing would place on us. But if King Mike stages his coup, can we count on them to continue to protect those of us who, here in the outer boroughs, will surely be victimized by this wacky scheme?

As he has failed with the big things, the out-of-touch Emperor, perhaps spending too much time with his billionaire pals at his estate in Bermuda, has put through some small projects which reveals how disconnected from our lives he is.

He boasts of a new bus line to speed travel time across Fordham Road. And it has. But it comes at the expense of every single parking space along Fordham Road between University Avenue and Southern Boulevard. The result? Retail business has suffered greatly. But hey, when was the last time unthinking King Mike shopped on Fordham Road?

The Benevolent Dictator likes to tell us what we can eat and what we can’t. So he (and the mental midgets on the City Council) came up with the craziest scheme of all, to place hundreds of pushcarts on the streets to sell fresh fruits and vegetables to “underserved” poor communities. King Mike failed to realize that if there was a real demand for more availability of fruit and vegetables, the free market would satisfy it.

So what happened? Only eight vendors came forward, and as of now, they are doing miserably. You see even his highness, Emperor Mike, the Banana King, can’t repeal the laws of supply and demand.

And he shouldn’t be allowed to try and repeal our term limits law, either.

Even if he was doing a great job, repeal of term limits would be morally wrong. Because this king has failed us, repeal would be a disaster for our city on every level.

By Andrew Wolf

For the past six-and-a-half years I have frequently occupied space on these pages sounding off on everything from nepotism in Bronx politics to politically induced fear of eating French fries or Frosted Flakes. Most often I have written about our schools.

I came to this task with a point of view, influenced by the events of 1968 and 1969, turbulent years for society, but particularly for New York’s schools.

The city’s power elite, centered around well-meaning philanthropists and non-profit think tanks, believed that they had the answer to fix what they perceived to be a troubled school system. The answer they had, and imposed upon our children, was decentralized “community control.” It didn’t work.

Today there is more fiddling with the schools than ever. Shortly after I began writing for the Sun, a new model, mayoral control, was put into place here. Because there were few restrictions on what the mayor could do, this initiative could have gone in a number of directions. And in fact it has gone in a number of directions, repeatedly changing the organization chart of the school system at all levels.

There will be those who disagree with me, but evidence suggests that a dispassionate analysis of these last six years shows a stunning lack of academic progress, even as we poured mind-boggling increases in taxpayer dollars into the school system.

After the mayor announced the first of his three major restructurings, I wrote on February 7, 2003, “Anyone who believes that New York’s children will do better under this system simply because there will be 10 mega-districts, rather than the 32 smaller districts that currently exist, is delusional. The children and their teachers couldn’t care less. What will make the difference is what goes on in their classrooms. That is where the change is needed, and that is precisely where nothing will change.”

That summarizes the past six years of mayoral control and the 35 of decentralization that preceded it. Reform must take place in the classroom in the form of better instruction and curriculum, conveyed to students by well-trained and literate teachers, using teaching methods known and proven to be effective.

The problem with education, I have concluded, is not structural but instructional, and can be traced directly to our schools of education where, by and large, only “progressive” touchy-feely pedagogy is taught.

If our pupils are taught mathematics using constructivist, “progressive” curricula such as “Everyday Math,” they are doomed to fall behind by recognized global standards. Ask Robert Feinerman, who chairs the math department at Lehman College and is the “chair of the chairs” of City University math departments. Or ask the mathematicians at N.Y.U.’s Courant Institute. They will attest that the math taught in New York City schools is inadequate to prepare our students to compete in the global economy.

It doesn’t matter whether the mayor or a Board of Education is in charge or whether a school is funded directly by the government or by parents clutching government issued vouchers.

It doesn’t matter if a school is a charter, or a conventional public school, or a parochial or private school. It makes little difference whether the teachers are organized. There is nothing in any of this that can compensate for inadequate instruction, and it will come to haunt us as a society in years to come.

We must not be fooled by boasts of “historic” test score gains on state standardized exams. It has become clear in recent years that these tests have been rigged, made easier and easier in an effort to make bureaucrats and politicians look better and better.

If we truly want to fix the schools, change is required in the top leadership of the State Education Department to restore integrity and professionalism to the testing process in our state, so we can once again use tests for the purpose for which they were intended - not as a device to determine which schools to punish or which politicians to reward, but rather a tool to inform teachers as to how to provide the correct academic assistance for their students.

If the events on Wall Street in the past few weeks teach us anything, it is that no system is so perfect that it couldn’t be improved. Fiscal oversight by the City Comptroller and independent and impartial oversight over testing and assessment, two of the most frequently mentioned proposed “tweaks” to the system, should pose no threat to the mayor if indeed the system works.

Rather than protect the status quo, we should be demanding renewed focus on world-class instruction in our schools. And that’s change we can believe in.

© 2008 The New York Sun, One, SL, LLC. All rights reserved.

By Andrew Wolf

The last game of Major League baseball has been played at Yankee Stadium, following an incredible outpouring of nostalgia and reminiscences. Now the vultures are swooping down to sell off the great coliseum, piece by piece. Seats will fetch about a $1,000 each, someone is ready to package the dirt from the field, holy ground to millions of baseball fans throughout the world, and even the urinals will be sold for their “historic” value.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

When the announcement was made that the new Stadium will be built across the street, it was asserted that at least part of the old Stadium would be salvaged.

Somehow, in a town that requires a public hearing if a restaurant wants to put a few tables outside of their establishment, no public hearing was deemed necessary regarding the demolition of this iconic building, one that, by the way, is the public property of the City of New York. The Yankees are merely tenants.

The City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, usually quick to protect scores of less-than-distinguished structures, has refused to “calendar” the Stadium for possible protection. This action would prevent the demolition and dismantling until the Commission could hold hearings, explore possible future uses, and consider the possibility, however remote, that the Stadium could be saved.

Isn’t this the least that Yankee Stadium deserves?

A Long Islander named Tim Reid traveled to Washington recently to try to convince the National Historic Trust to support efforts to landmark the Stadium. Mr. Reid is a friend of Linda Ruth Tosetti, the granddaughter of Babe Ruth. The message he got was clear: they appreciate the Stadium’s importance, and in fact they published an article about its significance in their magazine. But they must defer to the local authorities.

Following the two earlier columns on this topic that I wrote for the Sun, my son and I set up a Web site, www.SaveYankeeStadium.org, to advocate for the preservation of the great arena. There’s nothing in it for either of us, other than expressing our love of the Game as it has been played in my home borough of The Bronx for the past 85 glorious years. And, of course, to honor my father, who watched Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig from the bleachers when he was a lad.

We’ve gotten well over a thousand fans to express their support, most leaving a short comment. What is so striking to me is how many of them come from outside of New York, many not Yankee fans, but all expressing the belief that this isn’t just another ballpark. One fellow from Venezuela sent this comment on Saturday, in Spanish, “If you destroy it, I will die with the sadness of not having known the great temple of baseball.”

These feelings, as well as the outpouring of nostalgia in the various newspapers over the weekend, the all day programming on the ESPN cable network prior to the game, the thousand extra security guards hired to prevent fans from looting the ballpark and, yes, the very idea that even the urinals are of historic value leads me to the inescapable conclusion: this is a place people care about, a place worth saving.

Here is a building, recognized as the symbol of the national sport, known and honored in every corner of the world where baseball is played. It could and should be used as a museum, and would, I believe, become a major tourist attraction enhancing our local economy for generations to come. And unlike the expensive new stadium, the kind of museum I envision, perhaps a branch of baseball’s Hall of Fame, will be a 365-day-a-year draw.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m crazy, but I think that the future of an irreplaceable building is worth the time it will take to give some thought and consideration before allowing the piranhas to pick the carcass apart - a carcass I remind you that belongs to you and me as citizens of our great city, not to the Steinbrenner family or the memorabilia merchants.

As we learned after the premature demolition of the old Penn Station, the event that led to the creation of the Landmarks Commission, once the wrecking ball swings, it is too late.

A great deal of love has been expressed for this ballpark. Maybe we can harness that love and achieve the twin goals of protecting our heritage, and boost the city’s economy in this time of uncertainty. It will take a “Ruthian” effort. But that is something that comes with this territory.

© 2008 The New York Sun, One, SL, LLC. All rights reserved.

By Andrew Wolf

Michael Phelps, the Olympic champion, is understandably trying to capitalize on his remarkable athletic achievements. In reality, there is little money to be made from swimming. There are no pro swim teams, or other professional competition for which he could be compensated.

So in time-honored tradition, Mr. Phelps is seeking his fortune through endorsements. Last month he delivered endorsements for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes and McDonalds Restaurants. He might as well have endorsed firearms for toddlers or condoms for six-year-olds, such was the venom and antagonism of the backlash.

A group called the Children’s International Obesity Foundation charged that Mr. Phelps’s “judgment regarding the McDonald’s and Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes endorsements was either 1) ill-advised by his handlers; 2) the irrational product of too much blood sugar; or 3) a sad triumph of greed over good. CIOF believes that celebrities should think twice before choosing to endorse or encourage the consumption of any product which is inherently unhealthful to children, especially if that product is correlated to obesity, diabetes, and a myriad of dangerous conditions.”

I certainly had my share of Frosted Flakes as a young boy a half-century ago. I was then skinny as a rail. I probably haven’t had so much as a spoonful of the stuff for at least 40 years and am now as fat as a house. A delayed reaction? I think not.

The food police are doing their job scaring adults and children alike, and New York is at the epicenter of their efforts. Officials of Mayor Bloomberg’s Health Department wrote recently in a medical journal that the populace needs to be kept from such “unhealthy food” much as government protects us from food borne illnesses and dangers such as botulism, e coli, and salmonella. They have already banned trans fats, taken the fat out of milk served in schools, and taken the fun out of our children’s school lunches.

If you don’t think they can go further, think again. As quickly as smokers were consigned to furtive puffing in guilty groups outside of office buildings, eating certain foods can be demonized in the same way, though the science is far from clear.

Two studies recently published in the Archives of Internal Medicine offer contrarian conclusions that in one case questions the linkage between high blood pressure and cholesterol levels and obesity, and in the other the linkage between obesity and diabetes.

None of this should surprise anyone who has witnessed the past few decades in which the sands continually shift as to which foods are healthy and which are not. The truth is that nobody knows the truth other than this: People are living longer and more productive lives than ever, even as they gain weight.

As if the health arguments weren’t extreme enough, consider this dispatch from the Britain’s Guardian newspaper, just a week ago.

It seems that among some, a linkage has been made between eating meat and global warming. Reducing meat consumption will have a big effect on fighting global warming suggests the chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri. Earlier last week Mr. Pachauri, who himself is a vegetarian, spoke at “an event hosted by animal welfare group Compassion in World Farming, which has calculated that if the average UK household halved meat consumption that would cut emissions more than if car use was cut in half.”

This group is sort of “PETA Lite” and actively promotes vegetarianism. To me this crosses the line from health or even environmental concerns to political opinion. Animal rights activism can be found at the center of much of the dietary agenda that is being foisted on our children.

As a society we have been quick to accept whatever arguments are presented about childhood obesity. But have there been any studies to examine what the possible repercussions might be of the current fashion of giving children only skim milk rather than whole milk? Could this be related to the huge increase in autism? What about asthma? Could, possibly, declines in test scores over the past few decades be related to diminished fat in children’s diets? After all, cholesterol is a key component found in human cells, including brain cells.

The conclusion of the Guardian article shows just how little we really know about all this:

“Last year a major report into the environmental impact of meat eating by the Food Climate Research Network at Surrey University claimed livestock generated 8 per cent of UK emissions - but eating some meat was good for the planet because some habitats benefited from grazing. It also said vegetarian diets that included lots of milk, butter and cheese would probably not noticeably reduce emissions because dairy cows are a major source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas released through flatulence.”

On that fragrant note, pass the Frosted Flakes.

© 2008 The New York Sun, One, SL, LLC. All rights reserved.

By Andrew Wolf

The defeat suffered by the Bronx County Democratic organization, which lost every race in which it supported a candidate in Tuesday’s primary, may mean new leadership for the county party.

The organization was opposed by a so-called rainbow coalition of legislators, which includes prominent black, white, and Hispanic lawmakers from throughout the borough. That coalition is expected by political observers and activists to move quickly to depose the current Democratic leader, Assemblyman Jose Rivera, as soon as Monday night.

Mr. Rivera’s choice for a countywide vacancy as judge of the civil court, Maria Matos, a law clerk, was soundly defeated by Elizabeth Taylor, who was backed by the insurgent coalition.

Ms. Taylor won 19,228 votes against only 10,406 votes for Ms. Matos. Mr. Rivera’s choice of Ms. Matos upset some African-American party leaders who felt that they have been systematically underrepresented on the court. Ms. Matos is of Puerto Rican background while Ms. Taylor is African American.

Mr. Rivera, who has held his post as Bronx Democratic party chief since 2002, has been criticized by some politicians for not being evenhanded in his treatment of the various Bronx contingents. Some also resent his family’s high profile. Mr. Rivera’s son, Joel Rivera, is a City Council member. His daughter, Naomi Rivera, was elected to the New York State Assembly in 2004 in a district adjoining his.

The choice of Ms. Matos provided an opening for Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr. of Soundview, who is interested in seeking to become president of the Bronx next year. He was expected to be opposed for that post by Council Member Joel Rivera, and thus there has been no love lost between Mr. Diaz and the senior Mr. Rivera.

Mr. Diaz joined with his Assembly colleagues, Carl Heastie and Michael Benjamin, both African Americans, and then with Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz of Riverdale and his powerful Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club to promote the candidacy of Ms. Taylor.

An enraged Mr. Rivera countered by putting up opposing candidates to Messrs. Diaz, Heastie, and Benjamin. But when the votes were counted Tuesday night, Mr. Diaz garnered nearly 86% of the vote against his opponent, Israel Cruz, Mr. Heastie drew 78% of the vote against Sherman Browne, and Mr. Benjamin got 62% of the vote against Sigfredo Gonzalez.

Yet another organization stalwart, 20-year veteran state Senator Efrain Gonzalez Jr., was soundly defeated by a former senator and City Council member, Pedro Espada Jr., by a 60%-40% margin, a final embarrassment for Mr. Rivera. Mr. Gonzalez is under indictment for allegedly diverting $400,000 in public funds through nonprofit front organizations for his personal use. He is scheduled to go on trial next May.

Emboldened by their clean sweep, the “rainbow coalition” is organizing to replace Mr. Rivera when the party convenes its biannual organizational meeting Monday night.

“The Bronx right now under the current leadership is laughable,” Mr. Diaz charged. “They’re laughing at us from the outside. We’re looking to repair that.”

Since Mr. Diaz is hoping to run for borough president, it is Messrs. Dinowitz and Heastie who are most frequently mentioned as possible replacements for Mr. Rivera.

But regardless of the outcome of Monday’s vote, the clout of the once powerful Bronx Democratic Party has been greatly diminished. “It has been exposed as a paper tiger,” Mr. Dinowitz noted. “And that is not a good thing for the people of the Bronx.”

Mr. Rivera was not available for comment.

© 2008 The New York Sun, One, SL, LLC. All rights reserved.

By Andrew Wolf

A commission, appointed by Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, has recommended a revision in the State Education law, putting restrictions on the power of the mayor to run the city’s public schools. Lurking in the background is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the issue of term limits.

The two issues are intertwined, and indeed the mayor’s inflexibility, rejecting any proposal for change in school governance, suggests that he will indeed move to end or modify term limits, to allow him to run for a third term.

So adamant is the mayor about the governance issue that he convened a meeting of about 100 supporters from the non-profit and philanthropic communities earlier this week to unveil a $20-million dollar initiative to “sell” the public on continuing unfettered mayoral control.

This is nonsense. That the mayor feels compelled to engage in such a public relations effort is in itself an indictment of what he has accomplished. If the mayor’s “success” with education was unequivocal, there would be no need to supplement publicly-funded public relations efforts with this privately-funded campaign. But the “proof” of his results is largely based on New York State standardized testing which has been criticized as inflated when compared with national benchmarks such as NAEP and the SAT.

Ms. Gotbaum’s panel says as much, and thus dismisses the use of test results as the measure of success. Rather it seems to feel that the increase of expenditure of funds on the schools, understated in the report to my reckoning, is a reflection of the success of mayoral control thus far. This is even more preposterous, since the managerial effectiveness of any agency should be measured by achieving the best results for the least expenditure.

The panel does recommend some useful reform here, and the legislature should take heed. There is a recommendation that the city comptroller be given full audit power over the Department of Education, something he does not now have. A quirk in the law that fails to properly define exactly who can oversee this huge expenditure of public funds, has left the department largely to its own devices and has led to a vast increase in expensive no-bid contracts.

Moreover, the panel suggests “the need for an independent source of data concerning the performance of the school system,” noting that “the finding is a pragmatic recognition of the fact that a public official who runs for office on the basis of his or her past performance has built-in institutional incentive to present things in the best possible light.” They propose that the Independent Budget Office be given oversight over school performance.

Changes proposed for the city’s Panel for Education Policy, the entity designed to replace the old Board of Education, would provide a modicum of independence by giving members fixed terms, although the mayor would still appoint a majority. The chancellor would no longer serve as chairman. The panel would be given clear oversight over policy matters, budgets, and approve contracts, much as the old Board of Education did.

Other changes would enhance the Community Education Councils and restore powers to local superintendents to hire and evaluate principals.

All this is the least the legislature should approve to fix a system that has shut out the public and made one of our largest public investments immune from oversight. Students do not benefit from the squandering of precious tax dollars, nor can inflated test scores and graduation rates replace the knowledge and skills that employers and higher education institutions demand.

Which brings us to the term limits question. The zeal to preserve the current system of mayoral control suggests the mayor is indeed prepared to ignore the twice-expressed will of the public and join with the Council in overturning the current two-term limitation. The Council, a majority of which is would otherwise be forced from office, has nothing to lose by going along. Perhaps as incentive to prod everyone to action, the name of Chancellor Klein has been floated as a successor to Mr. Bloomberg.

The just and appropriate response here would be yet a third referendum on the matter, a better place for the mayor and his friends to invest their $20-million to influence the public. If the mayor leaves, the city will go on, as it did after the departure of such celebrated mayors as LaGuardia, Koch, and Giuliani.

© 2008 The New York Sun, One, SL, LLC. All rights reserved.

It is now just 10 months before the expensive experiment that is mayoral control of Gotham’s public schools is set to expire. And as parents ready their children for the start of classes Tuesday, the news has been released that the average S.A.T. scores have declined here once again.

There was no press extravaganza. No Power Point presentations, no top officials, union leaders at their side, beaming as the results were outlined. No, troubling test results turn out to be an orphan.

One could ask that if high school graduation rates are increasing, and if the scores on state’s standardized tests have increased so dramatically, why then are the S.A.T. scores, arguably a nationally-normed “exit exam” for high school students, going down?

Department of Education officials insist that it is because more children are taking the exam, a policy that the Department has been encouraging now for years. This is not borne out by the national results where an increase in test takers is also reported. Overall, the results across the country are flat, despite more, presumably less qualified, students taking the tests.

If there is a trend to be found here it is this. Whenever someone other than the State of New York administers a test, scores here are flat, or even go down. But when those kind folks from Albany come on the scene, scores on their tests magically increase, a phenomenon that explains the increases in graduation rates as well.

This is truly “high stakes” testing. As public revenues shrink, and lawmakers look for new ways to pick the taxpayers’ pocket, education funding has been largely maintained this lean year, following six fat years which saw the local school budget grow an astounding 79%. It is more than fair to ask if this really has been a prudent investment.

The S.A.T. decline comes at the heels of the decline of the number of students passing Advanced Placement exams in schools in which a privately-funded incentive program was put in place. Last week the results of that initiative were announced. Despite rewards of as much as $1,000 for those achieving a top score of 5, the number of those passing the test decreased in the schools participating in the experiment, even though the number of children taking the A.P. courses and the test increased.

This has become a sort of lottery type phenomenon, where it is recognized that “you can’t win it if you’re not in it,” even though the odds of grabbing the top prize may still be impossibly long. And why shouldn’t the students feel they can win? After all, they and their parents have seen their scores on the standardized tests administered by the state in grades 3 through 8 increase so dramatically, and they have been sailing through the subject area Regents exams administered in high school as well.

These are the real victims of test score inflation, a phenomenon that has been good to adults such as state education commissioners, superintendents, union leaders, school boards, and even mayors, all of whom can boast of the great job they are doing.

Even gains in real estate prices, as my colleagues here at the Sun reported to a startled readership in January, just before the slump was recognized, look different when held to a “gold standard.” In this case the gold standard is the NAEP exams administered by the federal government. Until the state tests are aligned with the results of NAEP, all of the “profit” that we are told that the extra nine billion a year we are investing in our schools is bringing us will be, alas, but fool’s gold.

In fact it is worse than that, because if test score inflation gives the impression that the policies we are following are correct, we will continue to pour more resources down the drain. Based on the bogus state test scores, thousands of principals and teachers will receive bonuses that, arguably, were not a result of any of the strategies they used in the classroom.

Meanwhile other approaches, such as the restoration of a rigorous curriculum and the abandonment of the touchy-feely instructional strategies, things that a number of us so-called “instructivists” believe would bear fruit in the long haul (as they have in the past here and today elsewhere in the world), are not pursued.

Unlike a business investment where all that is lost is money, it is the future of children and our state’s competitiveness that is compromised. Which is why I have been saying that, just as we subject public corporations to independent audit, we must do so with our schools as well.

© 2008 The New York Sun, One, SL, LLC. All rights reserved.