NYC Councilwoman Margarita Lopez doesn't agree with Mayor Bloomberg's policy on testing third-graders. Unfortunately, in opposing the policy, she ignored the First Rule of Making Public Criticisms, which is to use thy spellchecker and grammar checker:
A City Council member who was blasting the Bloomberg administration's social-promotion policies sent out two press releases containing spelling and grammatical errors.
The first release - sent Tuesday afternoon from the office of Councilwoman Margarita Lopez - asked, "Why is [sic] Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein ignoring the fact that the test is flawed and discriminatory?"
Lopez's office followed that with a second grammatical snafu.
The second release asked, "Why are advocates targeted for examining testing prodecures [sic] and policies implemented by the Department of Education? Then, an attempt to correct that error, turned into another mistake.
A letter sent out by Lopez's office yesterday morning, corrected the grammar error, but still botched the spelling of "procedures." The word was spelled "proceedures" [sic] the second time around.
Although one of her staffers was actually responsible for the mistakes in the press releases, Lopez offered to take the heat.
"I take total responsibility . . . The member of my office who committed the mistake is going to be protected by me, the same the way that I protect the children of the City of New York," she said.
Unfortunately, Councilwoman Lopez "protects" NYC's children by insisting that these tests discriminate against minorities. How is it protective, as opposed to racist, to insist that kids of certain races just can't be expected to learn to read and answer simple multiple-choice items?
Posted by kswygert at April 29, 2004 03:24 PM