Mayor Michael "Accountability" Bloomberg is very big on insisting people do what they're responsible for, whether or not they're actually responsible for it. This applies, of course, to teachers, who are responsible for absolutely everything. Factors that occur outside of school are meaningless, excuses, and in Mr. Bloomberg's New York, there are no excuses.
However, there's a different standard when it's not quite so easy to point to a teacher and assign blame. For example, in a Bronx school, a
clear toxic chemical contamination was not enough to provoke action from the Tweedies. Rather, it was an opportunity to run another test, examine all the mitigating factors, sit down and
