Neil deMause: The Website

No Child Left Behind, Bloomberg’s testing fetish, and their myriad effects on city classrooms.

It was not Mayor Bloomberg’s proudest moment. Last month, the federal government released New York City schools’ rankings on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math tests for 2009—and their scores had flatlined, even as scores on the state Regents exams continued to rise. “Don’t trust the Regents,” shouted a Post editorial headline, saying that the NAEP gap had revealed New York State’s testing regimen to be “a pathetic joke.”

It seemed like yet another Albany scandal, to go along with Client 9 and state legislators locking each other out of the Senate chambers. Yet according to a growing chorus of parents, educators—and, quietly, school administrators—the test-score brouhaha is just a symptom of a deeper problem with roots in Washington and City Hall… [read more]

For those of you in New York City and environs, I’m going to be returning from my long hiatus from live music the week after next, performing songs from my never-to-be-released CD “More Songs About Buildings and Gentrification.” I’ll be opening for my friend Scott MX Turner (aka Rebelmart) at two shows, at Freddy’s in Prospect Heights on Tuesday 1/19, and at Rocky Sullivan’s in Red Hook on Friday 1/22. Both shows start at 8 pm, and I go on first, then stick around to accompany Scott on his set. There Will Be Melodicas!

Years after first weighing in on the Washington Park controversy, I get to revisit the question of just whose ballpark wall is still standing in Brooklyn:

After all the hoohah over the last surviving remnant of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ home before Ebbets Field, it turns out that the wall in question isn’t actually so much a Dodgers wall after all. “I can say with absolute certainty that this wall was not part of Washington Park prior to the Brooklyn team’s departure [in 1912],” historian and Brooklynpix proprietor Brian Merlis declares in today Daily News. “It’s still an historic wall, but there’s no evidence … that it’s the original wall.”

This will come as no surprise to readers of the BrooklynBallparks.com site (run by my Field of Schemes colleague David Dyte), which for years now has been quietly laying out evidence that the windowed brick wall running along Third Avenue between 1st and 3rd Streets in Gowanus was built in 1914, after the Dodgers’ departure, when Washington Park was reconstructed to play host to the Brooklyn Tip-Tops of the Federal League… [read more]

Dunno if the copyediting staff at the New York Times is all suffering from fruitcake hangovers or what, but today was not their brightest hour. First off, a headline on the front of the B section teasing a sports story about a stunt cyclist who’s found YouTube fame reads “Peddle Jumper.” Which would be a fine enough pun on “puddle jumper,” except that spelled that way I kept wondering what he was selling.

Then, columnist Clyde Haberman had this to say about the decade just ending:

But first, let us briefly look back on the ’00s, a decade that in one respect ends exactly as it began: without a consensus on what we should call it. Plenty of names have been suggested over the years. The Oughts, the Naughts, the Naughties, the Zips, the Preteens, the Ohs and the Oh-Ohs are among the more familiar.

Some more familiar than others, certainly. While “ought” is an acceptable variant spelling of “aught,” the latter is used far more frequently than the former. Haberman ought to be more careful.

For those of you who’ve been reading my biweekly (and before that weekly) columns in Metro New York for the last two years: I just got word that the Voices op-ed section will be discontinued at the end of this month, and with it my regular column.

I still hope to reappear in Metro down the road — the plan is that it will still run op-eds somewhere, though the format hasn’t been worked out yet. In any case, since this past Monday’s column turns out to have been my last under the old regime, thanks to everyone who’s been reading me, and watch this space or my Twitter feed for future developments.

In reading this AP story about the removal of the last remnants of a public option from the health reform bill, it occurred to me: Do journalists intentionally avoid explaining certain issues because if they did, one side would sound, you know, stupid? Take a section like this:

Many Democrats say they’d like to see a plan like Medicare to give consumers affordable choices. Republicans and some moderate Democrats fear private companies wouldn’t be able to compete. The search for a middle ground has been difficult.

That doesn’t actually explain anything, which is a bad thing in an article claiming to explain “key issues in the health care debate.” But think about how it would look if the writer had actually tried to describe what’s going on:

Many Democrats say they’d like to see the government provide health insurance, because, like Medicare, it’d be cheaper than private insurance. But Republicans and some moderate Democrats say that the only way we can have private insurance is if it stays expensive, and no one will buy expensive private insurance if there’s a better option. The first group knows this is crazy, but can’t say it out loud because then Joe Lieberman will lock himself in the Senate chamber and hold his breath until he turns purple.

Indeed, the search for a middle ground is difficult. In journalism doubly so.

The Stupak Amendment follows in the long, sad tradition of restricting abortion access by class:

Back when the debate over health care reform began — I believe it was a Tuesday, in the late Pleistocene — nobody expected that it would end up reviving the memory of Henry Hyde.

For those too young to remember, Hyde was a Republican Congressman whose career highlights included trying to impeach President Clinton over Monica Lewinsky at the same time as he was admitting to his own extramarital affair. Where his name will live on, though, is in the Hyde Amendment: Passed in 1977, when the paint was still wet on Roe v. Wade, it declared that though abortion might be legal, Congress wasn’t about to let Medicaid pay for any… [read more]

This has to be a new record of some kind: Quote given at 3:45 pm EST; quote appears on web at 3:58 pm EST.

The great thing about living in the 21st century is that you can go online and, in five minutes, find the best price for an item you want to order. The not-so-great thing is … well, click here to read the transcript.

More revelations about the Atlantic Yards arena deal, plus some hint of how the Nets themselves will fare in Brooklyn:

Uberdeveloper-turned-Nets-owner Bruce Ratner better have some good meds, because this is rapidly shaping up to be a month of rapid mood swings for him and his Atlantic Yards project. While Tuesday’s granting of a desperately needed investment-grade rating for the Nets arena bonds must have been a sigh of relief for Ratner, since then he’s been pelted by less-good news that promises to take chunks out of his wallet:

• The record-setting $20 million a year naming-rights deal agreed to by Barclays back in 2007 turns out to be worth only $10 million a year and change… [read more]