Mayor Decries Education 'Platitudes' to Urban League Cheers

A nice article about Mayor Bloomberg's recent speech to the Urban League:

The mayor's focus on the inequality in education and fulfilling the  promises of the civil rights movement, which he cited twice, seemed to  resonate with the audience, which offered loud applause when he called the  absence of advanced placement courses and gifted and talented programs in  certain communities a perfect example of "the soft bigotry of low  expectations."
 
He also won over the crowd when he said teachers should be offered  financial incentives to work at lower performing schools and called paying  more effective teachers more money "Management 101."
 
"Those who don't perform up to standard, you let go," he said. He said  locked-in pay scales that don't recognize talent "didn't work in the Soviet  Union, and it's time for us to recognize that it's not working in our  schools."

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Mayor Decries Education ‘Platitudes' to Urban League Cheers
BY JILL GARDINER - Staff Reporter of the Sun
July 26, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/59202

ST. LOUIS — Mayor Bloomberg's demand yesterday that politicians go beyond "cheap platitudes" and offer real solutions for improving public education at the National Urban League's annual conference is expected to raise the bar for the 2008 presidential candidates who will speak there tomorrow.