Under these two, mayoral control of Gotham’s schools threatens disaster. With hardly any public notice, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has handed the progressive-education movement near-total power and influence in the biggest school district in the country. Unless Bloomberg and his handpicked schools chancellor, Joel Klein, admit to some monumental blunders, discredited progressive methods for the teaching of the three Rs such as “whole language,” “writing process,” and “fuzzy math” will soon be enforced in every single classroom in 1,000 New York City schools. This is a disaster in the making, not least because the children in the targeted schools are mainly...