BROOKLYN, N.Y. – President Barack Obama was in Brooklyn recently to praise P-TECH – a local specialty high school that is flourishing thanks to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s education reform strategy.

In 2011, Bloomberg closed Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights because of terrible student performance, bad school leadership and a toxic school culture, despite cries from the United Federation of Teachers union and current mayoral hopeful Bill de Blasio to keep the school open, the New York Daily News reports.

Paul Robeson was restructured as a technical high school and partnered with IBM and the City University of New York to prepare students as computer programmers and electromagnetic engineers. P-TECH took some of the city’s most disadvantaged students and gave them an opportunity to earn a high school diploma and associates degree through a six year program, according to the news site.

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In other words, the school helped make students instantly employable, and gave them an in with IBM.

“The concept has rightly drawn presidential attention,” the Daily News opines. “Appearing there, Obama called for ‘doing everything in our power to give more kids the opportunity to go to schools like this one.’”

The president spoke about how P-TECH represents what education reform can accomplish, and the need to create as many schools like it as possible, according to the news site.

Public Advocate de Blasio, the current frontrunner in the NYC mayoral race, and UFT President Michael Mulgrew were also in attendance at P-TECH as Obama lavished praise on the school. They were forced to grin and bear the hard truth that the reform plan they so strongly opposed in 2011 has worked masterfully.

“Their smiles were false-faced you-know-what-eating grins,” the Daily News wrote.

That’s because Mulgrew and de Blasio want to undo what Bloomberg has accomplished. They’re focused on employing adults in a union-dominated public education system, and that’s best done with large urban schools, regardless of student performance.

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That’s why they both want to issue a moratorium on school closures. That’s why they oppose quality charter schools co-locating with public schools. That’s why they both oppose most education options that are not unionized.

Many Democrats who enjoy the backing of the politically powerful teachers unions are in the same boat.

But on education reform, and the issue of smaller more autonomous schools, Obama has got it right.

Like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, he understands there must be a death penalty for chronically failing schools.

Hopefully, city residents will recognize that the education reforms Bloomberg started are raising the bar for the city’s students.