Cuomo's Lieutenant Governor Pick Says Common Core Standards Are "Sound," Doesn't Understand Why They're So "Divisive"

For a while there, nobody could find Representative Kathy Hochul, the gun-loving lieutenant governor nominee Governor Andrew Cuomo chose to run with him for re-election this year.

Today she surfaced to back the Common Core publicly, claiming the principles behind the standards are "sound," though noting there have been problems with the "roll-out."

Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor Kathy Hochul says she supports the Common Core education standards, but also backs a slower implementation as approved by the state Legislature this year.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers in March agreed to slow the implementation of the standards for student examinations. The Legislature last month agreed to a Cuomo-backed bill that delayed Common Core implementation for teacher evaluations.

“It’s smart to just step back and make sure that we all end up in the same place,” Hochul said.
Cuomo has criticized the roll out of Common Core by the state Department of Education, but said he backs the standards overall.

Hochul largely agreed, saying the standards themselves are “sound.”

“Sometimes it comes down to the roll out,” she said. “I believe the principles are sound, but the governor and the Legislature decided to have a reprieve.”

Hochul also had a Rodney King moment in which she implored us all to just get along over the Common Core:

“I don’t know why it should be a divisive issue,” she said. “We all want our kids to be able to do the best they can.”

If you don't know why the Common Core Federal Standards are so divisive, Rep. Hochul, then you don't deserve to be lieutenant governor.

Parents don't like it when their children are subjected to nonsensical math standards.

Parents don't like it when the literature their children used to read in class is replaced with meeting minutes from the Federal Reserve Board of San Francisco.

Parents don't like it when their children cry because the homework they have been given doesn't make any sense.

Parents don't like it when their children are subjected to an Endless Testing regime that sees their children taking both state tests and local assessments so that their teachers so-called performances can be evaluated by the NYSED via the Cuomo APPR teacher evaluation system.

Parents don't like it when the Regents and the NYSED set the cut scores for their vaunted new Common Core tests high enough to ensure 70% of the children around the state "fail" those tests, thus giving the edu-functionaries in Albany P.R. opportunities to call for even more radical education reforms because the current system is "failing".

And parents don't like it when the tests themselves are kept as secret as an NSA call tracking list because the NYSED and the Regents don't want anybody to get a look at how bad the tests are or how rigged the cut scoring is.

None of this stuff can be fixed by a better implementation or roll-out of the standards, Rep. Hochul.

That's why the Common Core Federal Standards and the ancillary reforms that have come with them are so "divisive."

It was great to finally see you on the campaign trail after all that hiding out.

But now you can go back under the rock you crawled out from under to issue your CCSS suppport, Rep. Hochul.

That's clearly where you belong.

Here's hoping come November, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo will join you there.