The UFT's snarky response to NY Winning of Broad Prize

The UFT's Edwize blog can't let Bloomberg and Klein have even one day to enjoy a great honor for years of hard work, posting a snarky piece entitled "Magic With Numbers" (see below), as if NYC's vast improvements are all smoke and mirrors, within minutes of the announcement of NYC winning the Broad Prize.  Here's Andy Rotherham's take at Eduwonk (www.eduwonk.com/2007/09/odds-and-ends.html <http://www.eduwonk.com/2007/09/odds-and-ends.html> ):

Now With Bonus Criteria Quibbling!
 
Off Message: New  York wins the $1 million Broad Prize for education <http://www.broadprize.org/> *, UFT <http://www.uft.org/>  head Randi Weingarten says, "It's a great  day for New York" and joins city officials to accept the award but over at Edwize they're all  grumbling and sourpuss <http://edwize.org/magic-with-numbers> . *I'm on the review board.
 
Update: Now they protest that they're quite down with  all this. We "quibbled with the evaluation criteria but not with the award"  says an update to the first post. Huh? Here's what they said, "At the least,  we should not mistake this as clear evidence of a serious, long-term  turnaround in education in this city." That, in a post entitled "Magic with  numbers" that also rips Chancellor Klein? If that's on board with this, then what would they say if they were critical? Memo to Randi Weingarten:  Don't leave the kids with the keys when you're out of town accepting awards!

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September 18, 2007

 
Magic with numbers [Updated]

http://edwize.org/magic-with-numbers#more-899

New York City’s parent blog <http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/>  predicted the city would win the the prestigious Broad Prize, though they weren’t happy about it. This is a $1 million award to the most-improved urban district, in the estimation of financier Eli Broad. New York under Joel Klein has twice been nominated but never won.