How Albany educrats turned NYs once-proud schools into a national joke

New York state once believed poor children could meet high expectations.This week, the Board of Regents showed just how far Albany has retreated from that conviction when it chose to further erode the state’s high-school graduation requirements.Hearing the news recalled my experience a few months ago, as I discussed education as a guest on an NPR talk show in Albany.When I mentioned that Mississippi has become a national model for improving children’s literacy, my fellow panelists laughed out loud.These weren’t know-nothings, but academics, journalists and public-policy professionals.Yet they were incredulous: What could New York possibly have to learn from a backward state like Mississippi?Quite a lot, as it happens.On the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, the nation’s report card, Mississippi’s fourth-graders outperformed ours in reading.Black and Hispanic fourth-graders there scored much higher than their peers in New York, even though Mississippi spends a fraction of what we do on public education.For generations, New York boasted of the seriousness of its educational institutions.We built one of America’s great public university systems and some of its most selective public high schools.Our state Board of Regents predates the US Constitution.That seriousness was still very much alive when I became a fifth-grade teacher in the South Bronx in 2002, soon after Michael Bloomberg won mayoral control of the schools.Under Chancellor Joel Klein, charter schools were welcomed with open arms.Philanthropists and education entrepreneurs flocked to a New York that was determined to become a national center of education reform.Underlying it was a bedrock belief that poor children can achieve at high levels.Poverty made education more difficult, but did not excuse failure.When students weren’t learning, the proper response was better teaching, stronger schools and higher expectations.That idea has fallen entirely out of fashion — and today,...