Ooh, lookee here - Rupert Murdoch just slapped Cuomo across the face with today's editorial on teacher evaluations and the Daily News made matters worse by comparing him unfavorably (at least in their minds) to the behemoth across the Hudson, Chris Christie (who happens to be Cuomo's rival, perhaps, for the 2016 WH race.)
Cuomo never likes to be criticized by any news outlets, but he especially hates to be taken to task publicly by his patron, Rupert Murdoch, or Murdoch's proxy in Albany, Fred Dicker.
You can bet Cuomo will respond the way he always responds when slapped by Murdoch - he'll act as fast as he can to make Uncle Rupert happy.
Remember, that's what he did the last time Murdoch slapped at him by calling him "Chicken Cuomo" on Twitter over teacher evaluations.
Within hours, Cuomo responded by giving Uncle Rupert everything he wanted (at least at that time) on evaluations.
But now it turns out it wasn't enough.
How long will it take for Cuomo to give Murdoch what he wants once again?
Oh, and one last thing - are the DN and Post coordinating editorials?
Funny how they ran the same one on the same day.
Daily News editor Colin Myler of course is a former criminal, er, employee of News Corporation, so perhaps there is some coordination there.
Or perhaps somebody in the education reform/hedge fundie world pushed to have the editorial pages run the editorials so close together.
More likely it's the second choice.
With the start of school just a few weeks away, I suspect we are about to get a very heavy-handed push from the education reform world and their media mouthpieces to get a punitive, test-centric teacher evaluation deal here in NYC that will give the DOE the right to impose dozens of local standardized tests in every subject in every grade on top of the state tests and use the scores from both to evaluate and fire teachers.
Who cares if adding dozens of high stakes standardized tests a year to every grade in every subject makes sense?
Who cares if this so-called accountability movement is actually doing much more harm than good to kids?
After all, there is money to be made by Uncle Rupert and the rest of the reformers on all the testing, the test prep and the accountability and data tracking tools, and there is money to be saved by firing all those expensive veteran teachers and replacing them with cheaper (and disposable) newbies.
The UFT/DOE has until January to come up with a new evaluation system for NYC teachers. But teachers need to remember that our current contract stays in place even if a deal is not reached. If no deal is reached by January, NYC will "loose" some future money for schools. This is going to be more of a media battle rather than an old school union battle. The UFT must reject any poor evaluation deal. However, the key will be to get the word out to the public that any future money "lost" by the city was never to be used in the classroom anyway. (It is to be used to further create more tests for students to evaluate teachers)
ReplyDeleteThe UFT will cave under media pressure.
ReplyDeleteThis is what Randi calls "solution-oriented unionism."
Boy do you have that right RBE!!!
DeletePlease right something about this Friday's TeachersRock Concert airing on CBS. It's a front for The Parent Trigger Law and Walmart's new movie "Won't Back Down"
ReplyDeleteThank you.
Schoolgal
Schoolgal,
DeleteThanks for reminding me about that. It's a good idea to get out and front of that sham. Between Teachers Rock, Won't Back Down, and NBC's annual Education Nation jive, it's going to a rather corporate-reform friendly few months on TV.
As far as accountability goes, when is the legal system in the US going to hold Mr. Murdoch accountable and put him in jail for life?
ReplyDeleteI suspect never. But I would be happy seeing his newspapers go down in flames. Now that they've been separated from the entertainment division, that may happen. The Daily has already announced layoffs - I hear that the other papers will be doing some cost-cutting too. Don't be surprised if the layoff announcements at the Post don't come soon. And if the cost-cutting doesn't work (and it probably since the Post loses so much money every year), they'll try and sell it soon after. If that doesn't work, they might just shutter it.
DeleteWe'll see.
RBE you are right about Governor Cuomo. This is where he shows how much of a pantywaist he really is!
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ReplyDelete