Free Republic

BROOKLYN— A revised New York State Senate map released yesterday would, if approved, put the Orthodox and Chassidic neighborhoods of Boro Park and Flatbush into a single exclusive district, guaranteeing to shake up the political landscape. (Snip) The proposed district is the second most conservative in the state. During the 2008 presidential campaign, for example, Republican John McCain won 60 percent of its vote.

Nearly a decade after Mayor Bloomberg’s school reforms, New York City students show little progress.The only reasonable conclusion to draw from this week’s report by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is that reading and math achievement by New York City’s students is dismal and has remained so for almost a decade. Known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” the federal test compares progress by fourth- and eighth-graders in 21 large cities. A mere 24 percent of all New York City eighth-graders read at the NAEP proficiency level (and only 12 percent of black and Hispanic students). In eighth-grade math,...