de blasio-2

The hypocrisy and cravenness of the so-called ‘Progressives’ is on full display in their rage against the NYC charter schools.

These schools serves primarily poor, mostly black and Hispanic students, they are publicly funded but privately operated, and they consistently outscore public schools. As reported in the NYT, last year, 29 percent of public school students passed the state reading tests, and 35 percent passed the math tests. At Success schools, the city’s largest network of charter schools, the corresponding percentages were 64 and 94 percent.

But Mayor Bill de Blasio owes everything to the UFT – Teachers’ Union, who supported his mayoral bid, and vehemently oppose the charter schools.

As Michael Goodwin of the NY Post noted: “Year after year, the union makes it clear it doesn’t give a rat’s rump whether children learn. It only cares about getting its members every dollar it can and making sure none of them ever gets fired for any reason.”

Via WSJ: Where Black Lives Don’t Matter

When Bill de Blasio was elected mayor of New York in 2013, he came in riding two progressive narratives.
The grand narrative was his “Tale of Two Cities,” a New York where elites grow rich while millions of others are left struggling for basics. Running through this tale was the subtheme of race, especially of young African-Americans being unfairly deprived of their rights. So when the #BlackLivesMatter movement exploded in New York last year, Mr. de Blasio naturally embraced it.

“They’ve said ‘Black Lives Matter,’ ” he declared at a church in Staten Island. “And they said it because it had to be said.”

Today, however, the mayor is finding that his progressive measures are being turned against him. For nowhere in New York is the divide between haves and have-nots—or between black and white—as stark as it is on equal access to a decent education. It is this divide the pro-charter Families for Excellent Schools will highlight on Wednesday as mothers and fathers march across the Brooklyn Bridge to demand “school equality,” i.e., great schools for all children.

In the run up to this march, the group has released a powerful newTV ad designed to drive home the human costs of the existing inequality by showing a white boy and an African-American boy on their way to school. As the camera follows the white child, a narrator says, “Because he lives in a wealthy neighborhood, this 6-year-old will attend a good school.” It points out he’ll “likely go on to college.”

The black child is also walking to school. “Because he lives in a poor neighborhood, this 6-year-old will be forced into a failing school,” says the narrator. The narrator adds this child will probably never make it to college.

“Mayor de Blasio,” the ad ends, “stop forcing kids into failing schools. Half a million kids need new schools now.”

One measure of the ad’s power is how vehemently the mayor’s black allies have denounced it. “Racist to the core,” charged Bertha Lewis,an activist who ran the left-wing community organizing group Acorn until it was disbanded. Likewise the head of the state’s NAACP, Hazel Dukes, who calls the ad “an insult to our communities.”….

Video via NY Post

Related:

NY Post: De Blasio’s troubling relationship with teachers unions

NY Post: 15,000 pro-charter protesters ready to rail against de Blasio

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3 Comments | Leave a comment
  1. Alain41 says:

    Eisenhower 1950s; Brown vs Board of Education

    Obama 2010s; Blasio vs Board of Education

    And you can’t say, All Lives Matter.

  2. Piquerish says:

    Even when everyone else is screaming “ice cream!” the Loony Left is screaming “racism.” It’s what the divide-and-conquer charlatans do. Always.

  3. Alain41 says:

    In other Progressive news; IG report on use of Dept. of Interior’s Brinkerhoff Lodge on Jackson Lake, Jackson Hole, has been issued. The not open to the public lodge obtained for Presidential and high gov’t use, is designated for official gov’t business, but it’s been used the last 4 years for leisure by numerous guests who weren’t charged anything. No one knows how Lodge use morphed through the years. Nothing illegal, no no no, it just morphed. Arne Duncan was one of the users, so we can be assured that this is progressive education approved use. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/report-finds-improper-park-service-lodge-wyoming-34378257

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