City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein characterized last year's assessment test scores as "good," but critics say that they represent a lack of progress and a failure of Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to reform city schools. City kids' scores stayed flat on national assessment exams in math and reading, with a slight improvement in 4th graders' math scores and a drop in 8th graders' reading scores. "New York City’s eighth graders have made no significant progress in......

Today, Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Klein released the "first-ever" public school progress reports with letter grades. The reports are meant to give educators and parents a snapshot of how well schools are doing and empower them to keep improving. Mayor Bloomberg said, "With these Progress Reports, parents no longer have to navigate a maze of statistics to determine how their child's school is doing and how it compares to others. And our educators now......

Randi Weingarten=Sandra Froman? Mayor Bloomberg had some fighting words for those who criticize his handling of the public schools. He compared his critics to the National Rifle Association: "You always do have the problem of a very small group of people who are single-issue focused having a disproportionate percentage of power. That's exactly the NRA." He also accused the UFT of wanting to roll back reforms:There's the political power of people who just want to......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: three missing children in Brooklyn, a large fight in Queens, and a bank robbery on the Upper East Side. From the Brooklyn Papers, official word that the Park Slope One-Way plan is dead. After seeing Jacob's Ladder, we think Tim Robbins is remarkably brave to consider living in Brooklyn Heights. You know? What, no one else saw that movie? Paul Cortez was sentenced today-- he got 25 years in......

After news that the Mayor's plan to end social promotion for fifth graders, an education expert says the Mayor has too much power. The biggest problem in the opinion of Diane Ravitch, an NYU education historian, is that there's very little public input into the process. Interestingly, Ravitch told the Daily News she'd vote for Bloomberg in 2005. Gothamist has wondered about the Mayor's plans: On the face of things, it's great that he's trying......