Dan Brown on the Bloomberg-Klein Charade

A clip from Huffington Post:

Since his election in 2001, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made narrowing the white-minority achievement gap in New York City his signature issue. After two major overhauls of the system and countless changes big and small, Bloomberg and his appointed Chancellor Joel Klein are declaring victory , victory, victory!

And they are taking their education reform show on the road. Bloomberg is foraying into the national policy scene as a self-styled education czar, wielding his stewardship of the nation's largest school system as the ultimate credibility in knowing what to do with troubled schools. However, as we learned the hard way from George W. Bush, time in office does not necessarily equal ability to develop and enact real solutions. Last month Bloomberg testified to Congress that "In some cases, we've reduced it [the achievement gap] by half." Amazing--although specious.

Joel Klein and Al Sharpton have teamed up to lead the Education Equality Project, a non-partisan advocacy group aiming to tweak the federal No Child Left Behind legislation to the style of the Bloomberg-Klein New York revolution. A love-in with John McCain ensued. . . . .