In 2002, Michael Bloomberg, New York City's newly elected mayor, hoped to fix his city's public schools, which were widely perceived as plagued by a gamut of problems that ranged from low test scores to patronage-riddled schools and districts. A special bill approved by the New York State Legislature made Bloomberg solely accountable to the New York State Department of Education for the schools' performance. He was free to do whatever he saw fit to turn around the system. Results from standardized tests administered in spring 2005 would seem to indicate that the mayor's business-inspired model of school reform has been successful. Critics point out, however, that spring scores for 8th graders in reading, math, and social studies reached historic lows and that high school graduation rates, already low, remained stagnant. Many of the mayor's critics have taken him to task on purely curricular grounds, for choosing a systemwide, prescribed progressive whole language curriculum and a matching constructivist math program and for including in the curriculum hours of weekly test preparation practice. The Bloomberg reformers' standardized mandate dictates almost everything classroom teachers do--from where they stand in the classroom, to how they seat students, to how they teach. The result? An exodus of teachers and administrators out of the system, low morale for those who remain, and a public school system that is no more effective than the one it replaced.