There have been many post-mortems over the last few weeks about how Michael Bloomberg, the New York City mayor, could spend more than $90 million, breaking all spending records except for presidential campaigns, and yet manage to win only 50.6% of the vote.

Despite saturation advertising on TV, radio,...

While campaigning for his third term as mayor, Bloomberg recently claimed to have fulfilled nearly all of his original campaign promises when it comes to education.

But guess what? There are some promises he left out of his checklist. Here are some he made when he first ran...

The New York Times was a great cheerleader for continued mayoral control over our schools -- including Bloomberg's ability to appoint a supermajority of members to the Board of Education (which he likes to call the Panel for Educational Policy, to make clear it has no real power to overrule...

In a previous column, I reported how Arne Duncan has become an embarrassment here in New York City for his misuse of statistics and his slavish support of our billionaire Republican mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who is running for re-election to a third term. Duncan also called a series of...

On Monday, Mayor Bloomberg announced he would extend his grade retention policies to 4th and 6th grades -- meaning that all NYC students through 8th grade would now face being held back on the basis of a single test score.

When he was asked about research findings that...

Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, has become a laughing stock here in New York City. He has rashly inserted himself into local politics by repeatedly urging the New York state legislature to renew unlimited mayoral control, with no checks and balances and no parent input allowed.

Frank McCourt died yesterday. He was a wonderful writer, and very unsentimental about the teaching profession. He taught in NYC high schools for thirty years and wrote a book about his experiences called Teacher Man. His insights would be very valuable to Joel Klein or Arne Duncan, if they...

It was an incredibly depressing event - the total Mayoral takeover of our schools, despite the legal sunset of Mayoral control.

The New York State Senate, locked in a leadership battle, had refused to act before midnight June 30 -- bringing back into law the previous school governance system,...

Here in New York City, we are living in a banana republic known as Bloomberg Inc. This sad reality is most apparent when it comes to our public schools.

Our Board of Education, which the Mayor decided to rename the Panel on Educational Policy was called into session on...

Here in New York City, we are living in a banana republic known as Bloomberg, Inc. This sad reality is most apparent when it comes to our public schools.

Our Board of Education, which the Mayor decided to rename the Panel on Educational Policy, was called into session on...