Cowardly Cuomo Continues To Run From His Own Education Reform Agenda

From Newsday:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo didn’t bite Monday when asked about a proposal by Sen. John Flanagan (R-East Northport) to eliminate some student testing, re-evaluate the Common Core academic standards and tighten student-data privacy.

Flanagan, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, unveiled his proposed legislation last week.
"Who is this?" Cuomo said when a reporter asked him about Flanagan's initiative.

Cuomo then suggested Flanagan put forth a bill. When told the senator already had, the governor said: "I don't know. I'd have to see the bill."

Critics have pointed out that Flanagan's bill is jive and does little more than give SED even more power than they already have over districts.

Nonetheless, that Cuomo won't even go on the record over something as mild as the Flanagan bill shows you how little he wants to do with the controversies over Common Core, the SED tests, inBloom or his own teacher evaluation system.

The past two years, during his State of the State speeches, Cuomo has lectured about how he plans for NY State to be out front in the education reform movement, how he is the official "lobbyist" for students who plans to look out for them by making sure they get more tests, more days in school, better teachers blah blah blah.

He sure had a big mouth on education in 2011 and 2012 - even early in 2013.

But now that all this stuff has become controversial, he won't even go on the record over the Flanagan bill.

As with fracking, he continues to run from the education issues.

So far, he's gotten away with it.

But he won't get away with this in January when he gives his next State of the State and we compare this year's speech to the past few State of the State speeches he gave or when he begins running for re-election in 2014.

He'll be put on record over these issues whether he likes it or not.