The New York Post’s editorial board read President Obama’s speech on education yesterday as a ringing endorsement of both Chancellor Joel Klein and mayoral control.
As I noted yesterday, Obama did not mention New York City in his speech. But at a press conference at a Brooklyn charter school last month, Obama’s new secretary of education, Arne Duncan, praised Klein’s reforms and hailed Mayor Bloomberg for taking control of the city schools.
From the Post’s editorial today:
Mayor Bloomberg’s fight to retain control of city schools got a boost yesterday from a formidable source: the president of the United States. OK, President Obama didn’t explicitly call upon Albany pols to renew mayoral control when it expires in June. But he might as well have. Indeed, many of the reforms Obama demanded yesterday, in his first major education-policy address as president, could have been ripped point-for-point from Bloomberg’s seven-year effort to reform the New York school system.