Kids are still reading, writing, adding and subtracting well below where they should be, given the amount of money spent on the system – money that could run small countries in many parts of the world.

Education has become the perennial political issue in the City of New York, like crime used to be.

From district leader races to the race for Governor, everybody who can print up a poster with their face in front of an American flag says that they will be the ones to help improve the quality of our schools, get more money for underpaid teachers and improve the educational environment and the grades of more than a million students.

Ha, what a joke!

The only problem is it isn’t funny because the results are tragic.

More and more children will not only struggle to learn the basics that they need to survive in the world, they will eventually have difficulty finding their place in it.

The old way doesn’t work. It hasn’t for a long time. Having a Board of people appointed by Borough Presidents and a Chancellor who could conflict with this person or that, for this reason or that, has only produced the same results with different names and faces.

The 32 local school boards set up decades ago to allegedly give parents more say in what goes on in their kids lives have become like minor league political farm teams.

Parents have not really participated in the process of electing the people who run these boards, as turnout at many school board elections is almost non-existent.

Continuing to move forward with the same system of education, including a central board and local community school boards made up of people who are elected by less than 10 percent of the neighborhood populations, would be real insanity.

It is clear to me — and I think to all of us — that something has to change to stop the insanity.

Something that could alter the course of education in the City and change the fate of hundreds of thousands of children who have been denied the quality of learning that a billion dollars should be able to buy.

The person who runs the City should have more control over the system.

He or she should be more accountable for the good and bad of what ever happens and should be given a pass when things don’t improve.

Right now, any Mayor can simply say "Hey, I just have two appointees on this board so I’m not responsible for the results of what they do".

We should have the justification to either remove that Mayor or urge our representatives in the City Council to make life tough for him or her until necessary changes are made.

Changes made either by the proper hiring and firing of the so-called Education Commissioner or by direct administration of budget, staff, procedures or whatever was wrong.

I also believe that if those powers are granted to the Mayor of New York City, they should not be retro active to Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

I am just not sure that he is ready to deal with that burden along with everything else he has to do in this town as a journeyman politician.

There is still the budget deficit, the economic doldrums, the various contracts to work out with a number of unions and, oh yes, that new inconvenience that we have had to deal with called terrorism, that will no doubt continue to drain a wide range of resources.

After a long list of terrible transitions, and outright tar and feathered departures in educational administrations, a smooth transition that not only affects who runs the system and how it is run is long overdue.

I believe this will be accomplished by allowing the next mayor to pick his or her own education commissioner with a board system that provides for more accountability.