What Does Andrew Cuomo Want To Do With His Education Reform Agenda?

From the Hudson Valley United site:

In a meeting with parents, educators, and union leaders,  Regent Harry Phillips resounded the cries of public school teachers and parents from across New York. “We botched this,” Regent Phillips said, describing the Danielson rubric as “impossible,” the current testing of special education and ESL students as “cruel” and SLO’s as “stupid.”

But mostly, Regent Phillips listened. The 13 year member of the NYS Board of Regents spent nearly 90 minutes with representatives from NYSUT, Hudson Valley United and Citizens Action on Monday discussing concerns about the implementation of The Common Core Learning Standards, APPR teacher evaluations, the under-funding of public schools, the over-reliance and unreliability of standardized tests, the powerful influences of corporate and private interests in New York’s classrooms, the use of arbitrary cut-scores for diploma eligibility, and the current direction that the New York State Education Department has taken. It was undoubtedly a productive afternoon, which included Regent Harry Phillips noting that the “botched” attempts at reform call for “civil disobedience” to resolve.

The primary objectives of the round table style meeting were to reinforce the connections between policy-makers and practitioners and to renew a shared vision for public education as the gateway to a prosperous and humane civil democracy. Meeting participants urged Regent Philips to support the course corrections that NYSUT is seeking including a three-year moratorium on high stakes testing, and to restore the funding and the focus of education on teaching and learning.

VAM, Danielson, SLO's - all need to go.

Clearly Tisch and King will not agree to that - as they have told us over and over.

Their reform agenda is going "full speed ahead."

But Governor Cuomo is up for re-election next year and he is facing some problems.

His performance ratings have fallen over the years and at least one public poll has him under water (44%-56% - Siena poll.)

He is vulnerable to pressure over the state's reform agenda.

For years, he bragged about how this was his agenda - his teacher evaluation system, his education reform commission, etc.

Lately, with pressure mounting from everywhere against the reforms, he has tried to distance himself from the reforms.

He must be put on the spot to say whether he wants to continue the reforms, as Tisch and King want, or whether he agrees with many students, parents and teachers that the Common Core implementation has been botched, the CCSS themselves are problematic, the testing regime is insane, and the evaluation system harmful to students as it calls for all this extra testing.

He also must say what he wants to do with inBloom, the data collection project.

NY is now the only state left in this thing that hands sensitive student information over to Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch.

Pressure must be put on Andrew Cuomo over all of these reforms - does Sheriff Andy want to go "full speed ahead" with these reforms?

These are his reforms - he owns them, he is the "lobbyist" who pushed for them.

He cannot be allowed to run for re-election without addressing these issues.