FROM THE SEVEN PERCENT COLLUSION FILE: Digest of reports!

MONDAY, APRIL 15, 2019

Starting tomorrow, The Little School System That Could: The mayor has a simple-minded plan for New York City's "elite" high schools—a "seven percent solution."

The plan is strikingly simple-minded. For that reason, the New York Times loves it.

The plan tilts toward vacuous all the way down. Last week, our reports on this unsurprising piece of collusion went exactly like this:

Tuesday, April 9: Mayor de Blasio has a plan. It's rich with winners and losers!

Wednesday, April 10: Though the Times supports the mayor's plan, Gay doesn't want winners and losers!

Thursday, April 11: Asian kids, report to the door! The roll call of winners and losers.

Friday, April 12: Throwing most black kids under the bus, the Times and the mayor collude.

So we reported last week.

Starting tomorrow, we'll present a series of reports on "the rise of the novel." More specifically, we'll be discussing a long-standing, favorite press corps novel:

The Little School System That Could.

Sometimes, the little school system is really a single school. Sometimes, the little school system is just a single classroom.

Sometimes, the little school system is really a large school system, like those in D.C. and Atlanta. Sometimes, the little school system is Finland.

But the press corps has been writing and rewriting this heart-warming novel for at least the past fifty years. In our experience, the novel can be said to track at least to Herbert Kohl's high-profile 1967 memoir, 36 Children, in which a nice guy shows up in a sixth-grade Harlem classroom and the kids start writing books.

Let's get more specific! In last Saturday's front-page report in the New York Times, The Little School System That Could is the I Promise Elementary School, a brand-new school, still in its first year, in low-income Akron, Ohio.

In these press corps "news reports," it's almost always a low-income school which has shown that it can. That said, these upper-end "news reports" are almost always pure novels, filled with rearranged, often comical facts.

So it was with that Times report, a masterwork of the genre. This new school in Akron hasn't even administered its first batch of annual Ohio state tests, but already it has allegedly shown that it can!

(For Saturday's preview, click here.)

Upper-class newspapers like the Times love The Little School System That Could. Through repetitive presentation of this heart-warming novel, we liberals are told that there's nothing much to worry about when it comes to the lives and the interests of our low-income black kids.

Nothing to look at! Keep moving along! Starting tomorrow, a treasured novel:

The Little School System That Could!

A look at where we'll start: Tomorrow, we'll be starting with the magnificent presentation highlighted below. This heart-warming passage comes right at the end of the Times' 1900-word front-page "news report:"

GREEN (4/13/19): Lining the walls of the school’s vast lobby are 114 shoes, including those worn during the 2016 season when Mr. James led the Cleveland Cavaliers to the N.B.A. championship, a reminder that he once walked a path similar to these students. Mr. James was also considered at risk; in fourth grade, he missed 83 days of school.

Nataylia Henry, a fourth grader, missed more than 50 days of school last year because she said she would rather sleep than face bullies at school. This year, her overall attendance rate is 80 percent.

“LeBron made this school,” she said. “It’s an important school. It means that you can always depend on someone.”

The gods on Olympus laughed, then cried. Tomorrow, The Rise of the Novel!