"In an interview with the New York Observer, Fariña says, “To me the most important thing is, what do my constituents think of my work? Are teachers happy? Are principals happy?" Are parents happy?” The students are just an inconvenience.

Carmen Fariña admits students aren’t a priority

By Post Editorial Board

August 20, 2015 | 8:00pm

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Carmen Farina Photo: Paul Martinka

Carmen Fariña just confessed her true priorities — and seeing that the city’s children learn what they need to doesn’t even make the schools chancellor’s list.

In an interview with the New York Observer, Fariña says, “To me the most important thing is, what do my constituents think of my work? Are teachers happy? Are principals happy? Are parents happy?”

Teachers first, principals second — then come parents. And she thinks of them all as her constituents — as if she were elected to look after their interests.

Sorry, Madam Chancellor: It’s not about the adults at all. You’re supposed to put the kids’ needs above all else.

And doing that would make a lot of your “constituency” unhappy — because too many principals and teachers aren’t doing their jobs well enough.

The Observer also asked Fariña what she thinks “when charter[-school] operators say city public schools are failing?” Tellingly, she dodged, claiming the issue is “more political in nature than academic in nature” before bragging that “New York has the highest [education] standards of any state.”

But the question isn’t political — and Fariña’s schools are falling far, far short of those New York standards.

A report Thursday from Students First New York lays out the extent of the failure. It looks at the just-released results of the state tests for grades 3-8, covering 1,283 city schools, and at how many of those schools saw three-quarters of kids fail.

In math, it was 570 schools, or 44 percent. In English, it was 697, or 54 percent.

That’s right: More than half of the city’s schools can’t get even a quarter of students in grades 3-8 to pass the English exam.

These failed schools include dozens of schools that do well on Fariña’s “School Quality Reports.” And they include every primary school that Fariña and Mayor Bill de Blasio have targeted in their “Renewal” school turnaround program.

“We’re making progress,” Fariña says. “If I made much, much bigger progress I’d be blamed for something else so I do think slow and steady wins the race.”

Sorry, “slow and steady” is losing the race for thousands of students trapped in these failed schools. They’re mostly poor, minority kids whom Fariña and de Blasio have abandoned — for all his talk of inequality.

This when the Success Academy schools take kids from the same neighborhoods and same families, and produce the best test scores in the state.

The Post’s recent “Worthless” series exposed the sham that is a New York City high school diploma. But the title applies just as well to the leaders of the city school system.