Standards in NYC are being weakened

An article about how standards in NYC are already being weakened:

So it is with the collapse of standards. What started as a trickle is now a gusher wiping away the tentative progress on accountability.

The biggest blow came with an innocuous-sounding press release from city Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña. She announced a new promotion policy for grades 3 through 8 that "takes the temperature down around testing" while allowing "educators to make decisions about the students they know best while maintaining high standards."

In plain English, that means that even if tests show Johnny can't read, we're giving him a gold star and sending him on to the next grade, where he'll fall further behind before being passed on again. That's the gist of social promotion, and it's now ­official city policy.

Mayor de Blasio later boasted of the move, saying, "We're ­going to in every way we can move away from high-stakes testing."

Presumably, that means he favors low-stakes testing, which is testing that doesn't matter. Welcome to the new mayor's education plan, where he'll be able to claim victory because failure has been outlawed.

Sadly, Gotham isn't alone. Across the state, too many students and too many teachers couldn't measure up to tougher standards, so the bar is being lowered or stashed in the closet.