NYSED Commissioner John King - Hypocrite Extraordinaire

First, statements made by NYSED Commissioner King today about school district insolvency:

State education commissioner John King said a number of districts risk insolvency in the next few years. He said increasing costs, particularly employee costs such as health care, could make some district budgets unsustainable in just a year or two.While school districts cannot legally declare bankruptcy, they can essentially hand the keys off to the state if they can not meet all their required financial obligations.

King said he was particularly concerned about “programmatic insolvency,” where districts are not able to provide a quality education because they have cut back on academics so much. He said some districts have already lost advanced placement classes and early education programs and that their students are at risk.

Now let's take a closer look at the part where King claims he's concerned because some districts "have cut back on academics so much."

I bet spending millions on new tests that the state plans to add into every subject in every grade, forcing districts to come up with alternate assessments for subjects that will not have state tests (such as gym, music, art, etc.) and forcing them to spend millions more on outside professional development consultants and programs to help "bad teachers" will really go a long way toward helping districts with budget problems to stop cutting back on academics like a.p. classes and early education programs.

Hey, John, wanna help struggling districts to maintain a.p. classes and early education programs?

Stop forcing them to spend money on bullshit mandates like adding new tests into every subject in every grade, forcing them to come up with alternate assessments for subjects that do not have state tests and forcing them to spend millions more on outside professional development consultants and programs to help "bad teachers".

King knows this already - he's just shucking and jiving at the hearing to make believe like the NYSED and the Regents have nothing to do with the strain districts are under.

To be clear, the NYSED and the Regents do not bear total responsibility for the budgetary strains districts are facing.

But the mandates the NYSED and the Regents are shoving onto every district in the state sure do not alleviate any of it.