New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. has a fiery article in The Huffington Post today in which he demands that the city get rid of Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. "In eight years as chief executive of the city's school system, he has consistently embraced measures designed more to sell the idea of a system helping our students to attain critical achievement goals than to target those goals directly," Thompson says of Klein. He also mentions two audits his office released last week--one addressing high school graduation rates, the other focusing on standardized testing methods--that he claims prove Klein is doing a poor job. (The claim has been panned by some local media.)
What isn't mentioned in the HuffPo article? That Thompson is challenging Mayor Michael Bloomberg for the city's top job this fall. Bloomberg appointed Klein and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with him on education policy. They're so close, in fact, that their names are practically interchangeable in discussions of leadership in the city's schools. And guess what? One of Thompson's key campaign strategies is attacking Bloomberg's record on education.
Probably should've mentioned these things in the article.
--Seyward Darby