Mayor touts city schools' recent success

Twenty-two of the state’s top 25 schools are in the five boroughs, as measured by new Common Core exams, the mayor said Monday.

That’s a huge change from 2001, when none of the city's institutions made it on the list.

“For a big city school system to compete with the wealthy suburbs, no one thought that would be possible,” the mayor said at the Talented and Gifted School for Young Scholars in East Harlem.

The Core tests stress real-world thinking strategies in English and math, and students are expected to back up their reasoning with evidence.

The mayor credited better teaching training and tougher evaluations in the city’s turnaround.