Metro

Schooling the critics

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Eva Moskowitz isn’t satisfied. The poor, black and Hispanic students in her 14 charter schools just knocked the new state tests out of the park, but she had wanted even more. Those are the same tests that most city students failed, leading many educrats to argue the tests were too hard.

Moskowitz (pictured) thinks they could be harder. “The math test was not rigorous enough,” she declared breezily.

Easy for her to say. Of the 1,500 kids in her Harlem and South Bronx schools who took the Common Core exams, 82 percent got a passing score in math, and 58 percent passed English.

Across the city, the pass rates were 26 percent in English and 30 percent in math. Many other charter schools also had dismal showings, and not all passing scores are equal. Moskowitz’s students scored a disproportionate number of 4’s, meaning the top range.

Her gloriously lopsided results — her network topped Scarsdale schools by 14 points in math! — would be suspicious, except they happen routinely. Year after year, even as the number of students in her Success Academies grows, she cracks the code on getting disadvantaged children to excel.

Her performance makes her the No. 1 leader in New York City schools — and a scary competitor to the rest of the system. In a better world, one where excellence is prized instead of feared, she would be chancellor and all city students would get the benefit of her talent and passion.

She’s not holding her breath, telling me, “The Democratic political establishment gets behind the person who is going to cause the least amount of trouble.”

That’s clearly not her. Her critics can’t deny her achievements, so they complain about her “style.” They call her “aggressive” and “abrasive,” euphemisms for a successful woman who won’t sit down and shut up. No man with her record would face such personal attacks.

The numbers tell the tale. Success Academy Bronx 2 was the top-performing nonselective school in the city and ranked third out of more than 3,500 schools across the state. Some 97 percent of its students passed math and 77 percent passed English, despite a poverty rate of 85 percent. The school did not have a single white or Asian student on exam day.

Overall, her network outperformed some of the city’s most highly regarded schools in math, including PS 199 on the Upper West Side, PS 6 on the Upper East Side and PS 321 in Park Slope.

And to think Moskowitz could be where Scott Stringer is now! In 2005, as a Democrat in the City Council, she ran for Manhattan borough president. She lost to Stringer because the teachers union declared war on her.

With Stringer now locked in a wrestling match with Eliot Spitzer for comptroller, Moskowitz knows she came out ahead. “The only regret I have is that we don’t have more independent public servants,” she says. “It seems like the whole system is rigged.”

The union war against her hasn’t stopped. Although Mayor Bloomberg generally supports her, unions and their puppets try to block her every step. On Thursday, janitors padlocked her schools over a minor dispute, and city aides supported the janitors.

“I clipped the locks,” she said. “I got them off, but it took all day. It’s death by a thousand cuts over battles that have nothing to do with educating children.”

Her matter-of-fact confidence in her teachers and students is a welcome antidote to the gloom at the Department of Education. There, the test results landed like a bomb, and the mood wasn’t even one of “wait till next year.” Officials said it would take years for most students to meet the new standards.

“Not true,” Moskowitz says. “We can do this.”

Yes she can, but the racial achievement gap remains a chasm, except where Moskowitz and other gifted leaders, like Geoffrey Canada, head of the Harlem Children’s Zone, operate outside the union cartel and the suffocating bureaucracy.

Across the five boroughs, only 16 percent of black and Hispanic students in Grades 3 through 8 passed the English test, against 48 percent of Asians and 47 percent of whites. Math results were similarly tragic.

Moskowitz looks at those scores with heartbreak, especially the schools that share a building with her academies. She cites one co-locator where 86 percent of students scored a 1, the lowest range.

“I’m not sure how you manage such a terrible result,” she says. “The adults must be so profoundly discouraging those kids that so few are learning.”

She turns sunnier as our talk turns to her students. “When you see a child who can’t read, but then not only learns to read, but falls in love with books and can write at a high level, you tell yourself, ‘I can deal with the political bulls–t.’ ”

She shouldn’t have to deal with it, but by supporting her, we can make sure she doesn’t have to deal with it alone.

Our national security in the balance

In his press conference, President Obama threaded the needle on outlining the right balances between liberty and security, and secrecy and transparency. The trick is making the balances a reality.

Obama was forced to promise reforms because of the leaks of Edward Snowden, the indicted former contractor hiding in Russia. Asked whether Snowden was a patriot and whistleblower, Obama wisely said no.

His remarks, against a backdrop of heightened terror threats, were a belated but good start. Yet whatever changes he embraces, Obama must make certain that security isn’t compromised. Otherwise, another 9/11 will be his legacy.

Channel changing

Here’s a triumph of language over truth: Al Jazeera in America has become AJAM.

The initials, popping up in headlines and the network’s Twitter feed, aim to sanitize the image of Osama bin Laden’s favorite mouthpiece. That history makes the brand a hard sell as it launches a US channel.

The antiseptic acronym might work — if Al Jazeera changes its stripes. If it doesn’t, by any name, it will remain unwelcome and unwatched.

NY Times’ ‘party’ foul

A New York Times story detailed the latest charges of sexual harassment against San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, including that he demanded dates from a nurse in exchange for helping a wounded war veteran.

Alas, the 700-word story neglected a key fact: Filner’s a Democrat.

Would the Times make the same mistake if . . . ?

Of course not.

A defective candidate

The shock in the new mayoral poll isn’t that Anthony Weiner has fallen to 10 percent among Democratic voters. The shock is that he still has any support.

Weiner’s serial perversions alone disqualify him, but they are not his only character defects. He’s also nasty, dangerous and dishonest.

Other than that, he’d make a helluva mayor.