Bloomberg's Numbers...

For the past week I've been thinking about the numbers Mayor Bloomberg threw down last week. And while I'm an educator and not a political pundit, I suspect that we're about to see more politicians buck organized labor's attempts to undermine charter schools and embrace the school choice and charter school movements.

The number of New York City's fourth-graders scoring at grade level on the state's English Language Arts exam this year rose 9.9 percentage points, while the percentage of the city's eighth-graders meeting state standards dropped 2.8 percentage points. Bloomberg astutely, and I think correctly, spun the 8th grade scores as victims of a bad early education.

Not only is this great news for Bloomberg, it puts die-hard opponents of charter schools in a seemingly untenable position. Very few people get elected betting on bad news (just ask John Kerry) especially when the good news coming in is that we've figured out a way to increase student achievement.