Sol Stern is author of Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice. This essay is adapted from his epilogue to the recently released paperback edition of the book. He is also a contributing editor at City Journal.

It's hard to know why the mayor's promise to put a back-to-basics reading program into the New York City schools morphed into the very opposite.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave his first hint about his plans for reforming the New York City school system on Martin Luther King Day in January 2003. I was as heartened as much by what Bloomberg didn't say as by what he actually said, and I applauded him in the pages of City Journal...

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