Ever notice how there are some times, some major disagreements between figures involved in government, when it's OK to hate both sides of an argument? A case where just plain everyone is wrong?
Here's an example: Kids in New York can't read, and the teachers' union is blaming the city's communist mayor, Zohran Mamdani. The problem is, the teachers' union itself is as much to blame for the sad and sorry state of the Big Apple's schools as the administration; maybe more so. But they're blaming the mayor anyway.
Zo’s honeymoon with the teachers union is over.
The boss of the influential teachers union called out Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration’s literacy initiative after more than half of city’s public school kids failed their reading proficiency exams.
United Federation President Mike Mulgrew took aim at the NYC Reads program after the embarrassing showing by students in grades 3-5 on their state English Language Arts exam, showing a rift with the labor group and the democratic socialist mayor eight months into his term.
OK, in all fairness, Mayor Mamdani has only been in office a few months. That's kind of a short span in which he could have screwed up New York's schools this badly. Fact is, this deterioration of New York's school systems, like so many of the nation's schools, has been going on for a long time. Zohran Mamdani certainly won't make things any better, but if the teachers' unions want to know why New York's kids can't read, then they should take a long, hard look in the mirror.
And boy, howdy, are things in New York's schools bad.
Data released Friday showed that just half, 50.3 percent, of all students in grades 3 through 8 scored as proficient in English Language Arts — a drop from about 56% the year before. Alarmingly, scores for the youngest students, third graders, in particular, dropped 14 points, with just 44% scoring proficient in the subject.
About 57% of the students scored proficient in math, only a 0.1% increase from the year before.
Half of New York's kids can't read. Half. That's not just bad. It's an utter disaster. And those numbers beg the question, what else are these schools failing to teach? Only 44 percent of these kids can do math at grade level, and that's another essential and basic skill. Are these kids being taught anything of civics, or history, or anything else that is necessary to produce a capable young adult, able to fend for themselves and to be productive in our modern world?
Safe bet the answer to that is "no," but I'd bet a sawbuck that they are being taught to respect each other's chosen pronouns.
The primary purpose of our educational systems is to produce young adults with marketable skills. Reading is one of those necessary skills. It's a basic skill, without which a young person is effectively unemployable, and who is then condemned to a life on the margins. That's just how it is.
New York City's schools are failing. The teachers' unions and the city are both to blame. It's time to try something else. Privatize the lot. The city clearly can't run an effective educational system, so fine; cut the government out of it. A voucher system would be a good first step, and school choice is widely popular among urban parents. Give the parents of New York's kids the option to send their offspring to the same private schools that the politicians and the teachers' union bigwigs send their kids - and the fact that the pols don't send their kids to the public schools, well, that speaks volumes in and of itself.
Editor's Note: President Trump is fighting to ensure America's kids get the education they deserve.
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