POTUS might keep kids is Sidwell after his term is up. Why not a public school w/ CCLS & hi-stakes testing? http://t.co/aF1AUnON7z
— Chris Cerrone (@Stoptesting15) November 30, 2013
MEMBERS OF THE INAUGURAL COMMITTEE
Gabrielle Fialkoff, Chair of the Inauguration
Eugenia Acuna, Former Director, Adolescent Reproductive Health Programs, Consultant at NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Yvette Aguirre, Retired Principal, P.S. 24
Marisol Alcantara, District Leader
Jordan Barowitz, Director of External Affairs, The Durst Organization
Harry Belafonte, Activist and Performer
Barry Berke, Partner, Kramer, Levin, Naftalis & Frankel LLP
Rodneyse Bichotte, State Committeewoman; District Leader, Assembly District 42
Fernando Bohorquez Jr., Partner, Baker & Hostetler LLP
Mili Bonilla, Parent Activist
Steve Buscemi, Actor
Lillie Cariño Higgins, Political Action Fund Director, 1199 SEIU
Raysa Castillo, Attorney, Castillo & Associates, P.C.
Eddie Chiu, Advisor, Lin Sing Association
Dr. Una S.T. Clarke, Progressive Democrats Political Association; Former New York City Council Member
Alan Cumming, Actor
Sonia A.M. Daly, Former Chief of Staff, State Senator Kevin Parker
Matthew W. Daus, Partner, Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf
Fidel Del Valle, Transportation Consultant; President, Catholic Charities Neighborhood Services
Rabbi Heshie Dembitzer, Bobover Yeshiva B’nai Zion
Janet Dewart Bell, Retired
Junot Diaz, Author
Jay Eisenhofer, Founder, Grant & Eisenhofer P.A.
Bishop Orlando Findlayter, Senior Pastor, New Hope Christian Fellowship; Chairman, Churches United to Save and Heal
Marian Fontana, Board Member, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Families Advisory Council
Charlene Gayle, Owner, The Macon Realty
Monsignor Jamie J. Gigantiello, Vicar for Development, Diocese of Brooklyn
Lewis Goldstein, Vice Chair, Bronx Democratic County Committee; 504 Democratic Club; Stonewall Democrats
Arun Govil, President, Ducon Technologies Inc.
Nick Gravante Jr., Partner, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP
Beth Green, Attorney
Sarah Currie-Halpern, President, SAC Marketing
Bishop Sylveta Hamilton-Gonzales, Founder and Principal, M.A.C.A.D.E.M.Y.
Fred Heller, Partner, Team Systems
H. Dale Hemmerdinger, President, ATCO Group
Louis Hernandez, Former President, NYPD Hispanic Society
Matthew Hiltzik, Founder, Hiltzik Strategies
Lorna Brett Howard, Philanthropist
Jay Jacobs, Chairman, Nassau County Democratic Committee
Joni Kletter, Associate, Kletter, Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein P.C.
Father Alex Karloutsos, Assistant to the Archbishop for Public Affairs, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
Eric Kumar, Co-Chair, South Asians for de Blasio; President and Partner, American Factoring Group, Inc.
Imam Khlalid Latif, Executive Director and University Chaplain, Islamic Center, New York University
Bishop Doctor Annette Lazarus-Rose, Senior Pastor, Bethesda Healing Center
Yitzchok “Isaac” Leshinsky, CEO, Housing Bridge
Gary Mayerson, Partner, Mayerson & Associates
Morris Missry, Partner, Wachtel Missry LLP
Rud Morales, Primary One, Inc.
Mike Muse, CEO, Muse Recordings
Sarah Jessica Parker, Actress
Don Peebles, Owner, Peebles Corporation
Ronald Perelman, Chairman and CEO, MacAndrews & Forbes
Rosie Perez, Actress
Mark Peters, Partner, Edwards Wildman
Suzanne Peters, Director of Operations, WD Wick Investment
Yuri Radzievsky, CEO, globalWORKS
Diane Ravitch, Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education
Jona Rechnitz, JSR Capital LLC
Jeremy Reichberg, JR Consulting
Bill Samuels, Effective New York
Susan Sarandon, Actress
Michael Schlein, CEO, Accion
Michael Schrieber, Vice President of Strategic Planning, Cassena Care
Alan Sclar, Partner, Sclar Adler LLP
Rajiv Sharma, Owner, Pranna
Grace Shu, Chair, Asian American Voters Coalition
Russell Simmons, Rush Communications
Steven M. Sinacori, Partner, Akerman LLP
Harendra “H” Singh, Owner, Singh Group
Marianne Spraggins, Managing Director, Bond Factor
Estela Vasquez, Executive Vice President, Health System 6, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East
Ocynthia Williams, Parent Leader and Organizer, NYC Coalition for Educational Justice
Steven Witkoff, Owner, The Witkoff Group
HONORARY INAUGURAL COMMITTEE
Rep. Yvette Clarke
Rep. Eliot Engel
State Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson
State Senator James Sanders Jr.
State Senator Bill Perkins
State Senator Liz Krueger
Assemblyman Luis Sepúlveda
Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh
Assemblyman Félix Ortiz
Assemblywoman Joan Millman
Assemblyman Jim Brennan
Council Member Andy King
Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito
Council Member Brad Lander
Council Member Jumaane Williams
Council Member Mathieu Eugene
Council Member Vincent Gentile
Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean
Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Theresa Freeman, President, Manhattan Chapter, National Action Network; District Leader
William Allen, District Leader
Leo Barrile, District Leader
George Gresham, President, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East
Jonathan Westin, Executive Director, New York Communities for Change
Chris Shelton, Vice President, Communications Workers of America District 1
Jill Furillo, RN, Executive Director, New York State Nurses Association
Bill Granfield, President, UNITE HERE Local 100
Dr. Barbara Bowen, President, Professional Staff Congress
Augustino Gagliardi, Associated Musicians of Greater New York/American Federation of Musicians (AFM) Local 802
Dr. Sepideh Sedgh, Committee of Interns and Residents – SEIU Healthcare
Dr. Frank Proscia, President, Doctors Council SEIU
James J. Claffey Jr., International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local One
Mark Carotenuto, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 2013
John H. Marsh III, President, Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association
Tom Shcherbenko, President, Staten Island Democratic Association
Independent Neighborhood Democrats
Lower Manhattan Democrats
Bay Ridge Democrats
New Kings Democrats
Barack Obama Democratic Club of Upper Manhattan
Democratic Club of El Barrio
Haitian American Association for Political Action PAC
Tenants PAC
StreetsPAC
.@deBlasioNYC puts @DianeRavitch on his inaugural committee
— Lisa Fleisher (@lisafleisher) November 30, 2013
December 9th is the Day of Action to Reclaim the Promise of Public Education: http://t.co/m4hlAgtUPs #reclaimit
— AFT (@AFTunion) November 30, 2013
@AFTunion @gailDrich Start w/ not taking $11 million in Gates Foundation cash into AFT coffers http://t.co/Ut8GINitDA
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) November 30, 2013
Thank you to the OHIO GOP for finally agreeing to study this important issue. We appreciate it! The National GOP came out against this 6 months or more ago. It is not for the good of the child. It seems to be for the good of Bill Gates, GE, Exxon Mobil and those who make software and sell books. Like Obamacare, it gives the Power to the Federal arm of government while ignoring We the People. It collects data on children Pre K to college to force our youth in the direction of the national desire not the desire of the student. It is beyond me why Catholic schools have agreed to go along with any of this. Probably for the money handed out by Gates Foundation. After all he has tried to buy off the PTA all across the US. FREE STUFF isn't really FREE. It comes with obligations and regulations galore. And maybe even lack of religious freedom. Please give this issue a lot of research. It is too important not to, our children only get one set of school years to make it!
Just as public school systems have widely adopted the Microsoft model in order to win the Race to the Top, it turns out that Microsoft now realizes that this model has pushed Microsoft itself into a Race to the Bottom.
In a widely circulated 2012 article in Vanity award-winning reporter Fair Kurt Eichenwald concluded that stacked ranking “effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
This month Microsoft abandoned the hated system.
On November 12 all Microsoft employees received a memo from Lisa Brummel, Executive Vice President for Human Resources announcing the company will be adopting “a fundamentally new approach to performance and development designed to promote new levels of teamwork and agility for breakthrough business impact.”
Ms. Brummel listed four key elements in the company’s new policy.
•More emphasis on teamwork and collaboration.
•More emphasis on employee growth and development.
•No more use of a Bell curve for evaluating employees.
•No more ratings of employees.
Sue Altman at EduShyster vividly sums up the frustration of a nation of educators at this new development. “So let me get this straight. The big business method of evaluation that now rules our schools is no longer the big business method of evaluation? And collaboration and teamwork, which have been abandoned by our schools in favor of the big business method of evaluation, is in?”
Big business can turn on a dime when the CEO orders it to do so. But changing policies embraced and internalized by dozens of states and thousands of public school districts will take far, far longer. Which means the legacy of Bill Gates will continue to handicap millions of students and hundreds of thousands of teachers even as the company Gates founded along with many other businesses, have thrown his pernicious performance model in the dustbin of history.
The recession might have cut deeper in Europe, making the question of new jobs even more crucial, but the attitude there is much cooler toward Amazon and its high-tech ways. In Germany, there is continuing labor strife. France is erecting barriers against the company’s aggressive discounting. And in Britain, the warehouses that so impressed President Obama have been compared, in a February story in The Financial Times, with a “slave camp.”
That shocking charge resurfaced in the latest investigation, when a BBC reporter, Adam Littler, went to work briefly at Amazon’s Swansea warehouse. His report, broadcast this week on the show “Panorama,” showed him hustling to keep up with the demands of his hand-held scanner, which gave him only a few moments to find each product.
In his ten-and-a-half-hour night shift, Mr. Littler said: “I managed to walk or hobble nearly 11 miles, just short of 11 miles last night. I’m absolutely shattered.” He added, “We are machines, we are robots, we plug our scanner in, we’re holding it, but we might as well be plugging it into ourselves.”
Michael Marmot, a labor expert identified by the BBC as “one of Britain’s leading experts on stress at work,” told the show that with “the characteristics of this type of job, the evidence shows increased risk of mental illness and physical illness.”
Mr. Marmot went on to say that: “There are always going to be menial jobs, but we can make them better or worse. And it seems to me the demands of efficiency at the cost of individual’s health and well-being — it’s got to be balanced.”
Mr. de Blasio said Wednesday that he’ll soon announce some hires for his new administration. “You can safely assume that there will be be announcements by the end of next week,” he offered, denying a report he’s already selected Bill Bratton as his police commissioner. “I’ve said this many, many times. When I pick someone, you’ll know.”
Comptroller @JohnCLiu and I both brought our sons to serve meals this morning. 10 am seating was full. pic.twitter.com/ISgwzdbUTd
— Errol Louis (@errollouis) November 28, 2013
@errollouis @LindseyChrist @JohnCLiu We need a society where people have jobs that allow them to feed themselves
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) November 28, 2013
AN NYPD supervisor has lost his bid to countersue whistleblower cop Adrian Schoolcraft.
Deputy Inspector Steven Mauriello alleged that Schoolcraft — who has a pending $50 million lawsuit against the city — concocted bogus complaints about wrongdoing in a Brooklyn precinct in order to ruin his boss.
Meanwhile, 62 percent of New York state voters back New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s plan to raise income taxes on the city’s wealthy in order to fund universal pre-kindergarten. The plan, which would need approval from the Legislature and Cuomo, was opposed by 32 percent.
“New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s campaign issue, raising taxes on the well-to-do in the city to pay for improvements in education, wins solid approval in every corner of the state, except among Republicans,” Quinnipiac pollster Maurice Carroll said in a statement. “And Republican State Senators still have a lot to say about what happens in Albany.”
Parents, students and school officials from across Suffolk County told state Education Commissioner John B. King Jr. during a contentious meeting Tuesday night in Manorville that the rapid implementation of tough, new academic standards has "set children up to fail."
Roughly 600 people packed into the Eastport-South Manor Junior-Senior High School, with a vast majority critical of the rollout of the Common Core academic standards. They say the initiative is far too difficult for many children -- particularly those with special needs. They contend it has prompted testing anxiety among students, causing some to feel perpetually discouraged and to lose interest in school.
They also said the state is inflexible in its implementation of this and of numerous other education plans, including a controversial move to link teacher and principal evaluations to student test scores and academic growth. The state agreed to such a move in part so it could receive some $700 million in federal education grants
...
The crowd shouted down both the commissioner and the few educators who spoke out in support of the Common Core initiative -- which proponents say emphasizes critical thinking -- despite numerous appeals for decorum. Hundreds walked out early, telling state officials they weren't listening.
Connor Sick, 18 and a senior at Rocky Point High School, asked King if he had "anything to say about why failure is being used as a weapon" to motivate struggling students. The commissioner did not answer the question directly and stood by the Common Core program.
...
Tom Laraia, 60, who identified himself as a special-education teacher who retired last year, said he was particularly upset over special-ed testing.
"The way we test special-ed kids is appalling," he said, explaining how some former students cried during tests.
Mary Von Eiff, of Southold, came in with her own sign that read: "Hey King, these are my kids, not yours. And they are not common."
Von Eiff resigned as the special-education administrator of Oyster Ponds School District in 2009, and is now home-schooling her three daughters, who are 11, 8 and 6. She called Common Core "the federal takeover of public education as we know it. That local control has been removed."
Karen Wing, 44 of Shoreham, took her 10-year-old triplets to the meeting but left early. She said the Common Core-related tests were "extremely stressful" for her daughters and that she and her husband hired tutors to help them.
Jan Achilich, special-education director at Remsenburg-Speonk Union Free School District, told King the state should have introduced the new materials starting at the lowest grades so children had time to adjust.
"What we are doing to our upper-grade children," she said, is tantamount to "physically throwing them into a rushing river without a life preserver."
School, she said, should be a place for children to sing, dance, create and learn together "in an atmosphere of grace," rather than under an umbrella of anxiety.
King, in an interview after the forum, said the schools he's visited have adapted well to the standards, although it has taken time and effort. He predicted that critics will look more favorably on the initiative as the years roll on.
"Now is not the time to retreat from high standards," he said.
“Tell the assembly we’re coming for them. We’re coming for them, we’re angry and we vote.”
Illinois gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner (R) has a new TV ad "showing off his modest watch, a symbol of his down-to-earth frugality," the Chicago Tribune reports.
Says his official bio: "Bruce has never let his success change him. He still drives a 20-year-old camper van, wears an $18 watch, and stays in the cheapest hotel room he can find when he's on the road."
But he doesn't mention his real estate portfolio which includes nine homes in Illinois, Florida, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and "a penthouse in a landmark co-op building along New York's Central Park, which property records show Rauner bought in 2005 for $10 million."
MIDTOWN — Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned the city’s municipal labor unions Tuesday that they should be prepared to signficantly manage expectations as they prepare to sit down and negotiate new contracts with soon-to-be-mayor Bill de Blasio.While he praised the unions for their “superb” willingness to help the city during tight times in the past — most notably during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s — the governor said labor leaders need to be “realistic” in their demands amid the difficulties currently faced by the city.“Going into the conversation, everyone needs a reality adjustment,” Cuomo said during an unrelated press conference at the Javits Center.“The unions have understood that in the past and they've acted accordingly and my guess is that they will again.”
BINGHAMTON — Bearing signs reading “We are human, not machines,” “Oust the King” and “End Fed Ed,” Binghamton area residents let state EducationCommissioner John King see — and hear — their discontent with Common Core state standards.
“Tell the assembly we’re coming for them. We’re coming for them, we’re angry and we vote,” said Christina Bangel, a seventh-grade social studies teacher
Bangel, like many other parents, teachers and community members, criticized King and other state officials for the Common Core standards, rushed implementation, student
...
King and other officials remained relatively quiet during the forum, allowing residents to voice their concerns and questions. When King did speak to address concerns, he was often met with jeers, shouts and heckling from the audience, asking him for proof or calling
“Tell the assembly we’re coming for them. We’re coming for them, we’re angry and we vote.”
New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who saw his job approval rating drop in Quinnipiac University polls in the first six months of the year, opens his reelection bid with a 62 - 25 percent approval rating today.
About 52% of the registered voters polled said they approved of Mr. Cuomo's job performance, with 8% of voters deeming his performance "excellent," and 44% describing it as "good." The same poll in April found approval of Mr. Cuomo's job performance at 54%.
State Education
“Any time you try to raise standards across 45 states, it’s going to be a complicated process,” King said.
King is traveling throughout the state to explain the initiative that supporters say is designed to raise the performance level of students statewide. But the common core has come under harsh criticism in some sectors
Throughout the state, some teachers are scrambling to teach to the new standards. Many teachers didn’t receive instructional materials on how to use the new curricula until mid-summer, leaving them little time to prepare lesson plans before school
King said the state would remain committed to the standard.
“It would be a mistake to retreat from higher standards and from the idea of college and career readiness for all students,” King said. “That said, there are adjustments we will make along the way. We already have in the last four years.”
King said some of the resistance to common core concepts comes at the teacher preparation level.“Historically, in New York, you could pass the elementary teacher certification
He recalled the dean of a teacher prep program telling him that candidates said they were going into elementary education “because they don’t like math.”
“That’s a problem,” King said. “We need elementary school teachers who have a strong background in math.”
Nearly three weeks after his election, Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has yet to decide who will run the city’s public schools.
Asked for a status update today during a rare public appearance, Mr. de Blasio offered reporters eager for any tidbits about his transition efforts few hints.
“I will say I appreciate the question. I don’t think it’s quite time to go over that,” he said, following an education speech at Columbia University. “The conversations are just being arranged now, so let us get a couple more days down the road and we’ll be in a position to give you some more.”
Seems Empress Tisch and her friends from the financial ionosphere have been buying and selling education policy and calling themselves charitable donors not influence peddlers.
This seems different from two years ago, when he wrote Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and suggested changes:
• "Impose rigorous classroom observation and other subjective measure standards...
• "Require a positive teacher evaluation rating be given only when the teacher receives a combined positive rating on both subjective and objective measures...
• "Accelerate the implementation of the evaluation system...
• "Impose additional standards on school districts... to make evaluations more rigorous...
• "We must make sure that school districts begin the process in an expeditious manner...
• "My administration will aggressively seek to incentivize school districts to implement the evaluation system expeditiously...
• "School districts would potentially lose millions of dollars on state awards for failure to implement the system quickly."
The fellows program grew out of former Education Commissioner David Steiner's 2010 decision to use an existing charitable group to give birth to a research arm of his bureaucracy. At the time, the department was being challenged by Washington to improve school results and by Albany to do more with less. Confronted by the department's loss of staff through cuts and early-retirement incentives and federal pressure to adopt reforms under the Race to the Top initiative, Steiner, his then-deputy King and Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch tried something different: They leveraged private donations, starting with $1 million from the private foundation established by Tisch and her husband, Loews Corp. CEO James Tisch, to infuse the Regents Research Fund with dollars to hire education consultants.
What was envisioned as a short-term, relatively small augmentation to SED staff has grown exponentially. Fellows operate independently and communicate regularly with King and many interact regularly with state workers, but are not bound by Public Officer's Law or ethics rules imposed on government officials.
Big record-keeping changes are coming to schools across the state.
Under a new plan, public schools will be required to send student data, such as grades and attendance records, to a cloud-based data storage company sometime after the new year.
New York is the first state to make a full commitment to the program created by the Atlanta-based InBloom.
A number of states flirted with using the program, but withdrew.
The initiative has come under fire from parents, who fear that the data will not be secure and could be sold to marketers.
The New York State Department of Education says that the data will be accessible only to parents and educators via the internet.
NEW YORK (AP) — After months of debate about the risks of storing student data in the cloud, New York is pressing ahead with a plan to create a statewide database for every public school student's grades, tests scores and attendance records — a tech startup proposal that drew interest from several other states that have now reconsidered.
Concerns from parents about who will have access to the information, how long it will be held and whether it will be used for marketing purposes have stalled the momentum of a startup that promised to bring efficiency and cost savings to record-keeping that is still largely handled district by district across the country.
...
Founded in February with $100 million in grant money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corp., Atlanta-based data-storage company inBloom drew early interest from several states.
But within months, Louisiana, Kentucky, Georgia and Delaware pulled back. Massachusetts is using inBloom services in one pilot district but has made no commitment to further involvement. The school board in the Jefferson County, Colo., district in suburban Denver canceled inBloom this month amid parent opposition.
Illinois is participating, but that state's Board of Education said individual districts don't have to send their data if they don't want to.
The New York State Education Department, however, is going forward with plans requiring districts to send student information with names to inBloom sometime after Jan. 1.
The data will be accessible by educators and parents through a portal. For New York students, the data will include grades, standardized test scores and any medical diagnosis that requires special-education services. Suspensions will be logged as part of a student's attendance record, but the reason for a suspension won't be.
A group of New York City parents sued this month to block the release of student information to inBloom, and critics still hope to persuade state officials to step back from the data plan.
Lawmakers attending a hearing in Albany this past week demanded to know why New York was the only state that's still all-in with inBloom, with no "opt-out" provision for families or for districts.
State Education Commissioner John King said that he shared their concerns about security but that collecting student data "is necessary for the good functioning of districts, schools and states."
...
In addition to security concerns, debate has focused on fears that companies will use the data to sell educational products.
"It's not an educational plan. It's a marketing plan," said Lisa Rudley, a mother of three from Ossining, N.Y., who testified at the assembly hearing.
.@michaelpollan @paultough NOT a good idea; Bloomberg has been a disaster when it comes to instituting tech systems; witness CityTime
— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) November 24, 2013
Bureaucrats at the New York City Housing Authority gave their new $36 million computerized rent-collection system the bizarre acronym NICE (NYCHA Improving Customer Experience).
But for landlords and public housing tenants, the system — designed by firm Siebel-Oracle — is a cyber-monster run amok.Since NICE was launched in February, the annual certification process for 100,000 tenants who receive Section 8 rent subsidies has turned into a hellhole of disappeared documents, erroneous payments and baseless eviction notices.Many of the 30,000 private landlords who get paid by the Housing Authority are up fed up.
“It’s total chaos beyond belief,” said one Brooklyn building owner. “Landlords are being mixed up and getting wrong checks. Sometimes the computer automatically sends termination notices to every tenant in a building. Transfers get held up for months. The whole thing gets worse every day.”
And let's not forget the Bloomberg Blizzard Disaster of 2011 that saw Bloomberg telling people to relax and take in a Broadway show as New Yorkers died in this city because Bloomberg was too incompetent to get the streets plowed in a timely fashion.
Everywhere Governor Cuomo goes these days, he’s dogged by questions from reporters about what’s widely perceived as a rocky start up of New York State’s adoption of the new national Common Core standards for school children.
Cuomo was asked essentially the same question in recent days in stops from Buffalo, to Lake Placid.
“Can you talk about the common core, a lot of people have issues with it," asked a reporter in Lake Placid on November 20th.
In his answers lately , Governor Cuomo distances himself from the growing discontent that’s led to raucous meetings between state education officials and angry parents and teachers.
At an event on Staten Island, Cuomo called the implementation of the Common Core standards “problematic” . In Lake Placid, he acknowledged the unease.
“It’s been very controversial,” Cuomo said. “It’s very controversial here in the state.”
Just a month ago, on October 23rd, Cuomo sounded much more supportive of the Common Core implementation, saying change can be hard “even when it’s right”.
“When you come in with a big change, there’s normally fits and starts, and it’s a little jerky, so that’s to be expected, “Cuomo said. “But Common Core curriculum, nationwide that’s where the country’s going, that’s the state of the art.”
Cuomo made those comments just a few days after a raucous meeting in Poughkeepsie, where parents and teachers complained to State Education Commissioner John King that their children are taking too many tests, and teachers are not given adequate preparation to teach the new curriculum required to meet the standards. At one point, King was shouted down.
The Poughkeepsie forum was also Commissioner King’ s first meeting with parents and teachers since the first set of exams were released since the Common Core was adopted. Those tests concluded that two thirds of the state’s third through eight graders were not adequately prepared to be on track for college or careers in the 21st century.
Since then, unease about the adoption of the standards has only grown. It’s been the subject of two sometimes contentious legislative hearings, and at a recent forum on Long Island, things were not much calmer.
In New York State, the Governor does not have direct control over education. Cuomo has no power to appoint the education commissioner. King was chosen by the State Board of Regents. The Regents members are picked by the legislature. Cuomo is quick to point that out.
“The governor is not in charge of the State Education Department,” Cuomo has said more than once.
A recent Siena Poll shows New Yorkers have become disenchanted with the Common Core. Nearly half hold doubts about its effectiveness.
Steve Greenberg, a spokesmen for Siena polls, says voters, though, may not make the distinction of who has authority over the education department, and Cuomo will likely be held accountable whether he’s actually in charge of it or not.
“Education is a key issue, and I think what this poll says is that all of those involved in education have to do a better job of informing the New York voters and citizens of what their efforts are, what their purpose is , and how they’re going about doing it,” Greenberg said.
Cuomo has not been shy in speaking out about education matters in the past . He has referred to himself as the “lobbyist” for students, and in the past has railed against excessive school spending, saying “more money” is not the answer. Cuomo does have the power in the state budget, to partly determine who much money schools will receive.
Cuomo also advocated for the state’s quick adoption of the new higher standards, as well as new , tougher teacher evaluations. New York is one of only two states to fast track the transition to Common Core.
While the Governor can’t directly affect education policy, he and the legislature can pass legislation to slow down the implementation of the Common Core standards. Many groups, including teachers unions, have been calling for a moratorium. At each stop the governor has made in recent days, he has hinted that he might just try to do that.
“The state could pass a law that stops it, starts it, accelerates it, etc.,” Cuomo said.
The governor says he’s going to be keeping an eye on the situation.