Cuomo Education Reform Panel Still Not Done With Their Report

Jessica Bakeman at Capital NY:

ALBANY—A panel of education experts tasked with making recommendations to Governor Andrew Cuomo for how to improve student performance is months late releasing its final report.

The commission even missed last week's State of the State address, during which the governor laid out an ambitious schools agenda for the year.

Cuomo empaneled his Education Reform Commission in April 2012, asking the group to develop a preliminary report and a final set of recommendations outlining ways to improve student performance. The 25-member group includes a slew of national and statewide business and education leaders, including American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, SUNY chancellor Nancy Zimpher, CUNY chancellor Matthew Goldstein, state education commissioner John King and the chairs of the Legislature's Education committees, Senator John Flanagan and Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan.

A memo describing the commission's tasks required the group to issue its preliminary report by Dec. 1, 2012 and its final recommendations by Sept. 1, 2013. Two weeks into the new year, the final report is still not out, and members of the commission give varying accounts of whether it is complete.

...

 The governor's office declined to comment and wouldn't say when the report would be released.

Of course this Education Reform Commission was one of Cuomo's brilliant ideas from a few State of the State speeches ago, when he proclaimed himself the "student lobbyist."

At the time, Cuomo talked the Education Reform Commission up as a way to bring even more so-called innovative education reform to NY State

Since that time, however, the reform agenda Cuomo has been pushing has gotten controversial, with parents and teachers around the state protesting the Common Core, the APPR teacher evaluation system that mandates so many extra tests, the tests themselves and the inBloom data project which is supposed to track all the stats.

I'm not surprised, frankly, that the Education Reform Commission report is delayed, now that the reforms themselves have gotten controversial.