LITTLE ROCK, Ark.--Is there a bigger scandal in America than the low state of inner-city schools?

      There are multiple-choice answers to that question, and most of them are right. Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York offered one answer in his State of the City speech Wednesday: The desire to learn disappeared down the bottomless well of centralized public-school bureaucracies. Mayor Bloomberg proposed greatly increased autonomy for school principals--one irrefutably proven answer to making a school better. He also wants teachers to prove they deserve tenure, an idea so obvious that it probably has no chance.

      One measure of the tenure decision for New York City teachers would be their students' test scores. News accounts said the city teachers' union is "certain to fight" linking test scores to tenure. This, too, is among the multitude of correct answers for why students have no incentive to learn in big-city schools.

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