Cuomo Ignores Parent Outrage Over Common Core, Testing In His Ed Reform Agenda

If you missed it, Governor Cuomo made public his coming assault on schools and teachers in a letter from one of his hacks to Regents Chancellor Tisch and NYSED Commissioner King that was made public.

The general gist is, he plans on addressing the following:

1. The evaluation system
2. The 3020a disciplinary process
3. The ATR pool in NYC
4. Teacher certification
5. Probationary period for teachers
6. Making it easy to close schools
7. Increase in charter schools, especially in NYC
8. Adding more technology to the system, including online classes
9. Consolidating districts
10. Reforming the Regents appointment process
11. Making the hiring of NYSED Commissioner King's replacement transparent

The Cuomo hack who allegedly wrote the letter, State Operations Director Jim Malatras, wrote that the list partially comes from interactions the governor had with members of the public during the campaign season (that statement is in paragraph 5 of the letter to Tisch and King.)

It's interesting that Cuomo claims his education reform agenda is coming as a reaction to what members of the public had to say to him abut education over the course of the campaign season, since what I remember most about the last year in politics is parent and teacher outrage over Common Core, testing, and data tracking.

In fact, Cuomo criticized NYSED Commissioner King and the Board of Regents over their Common Core rollout when he was greeted by anti-CCSS parent protesters in Rochester.

Parents met King and Tisch at town halls all over the state to express their anger over Common Core and the Endless Testing regime that the state is pursuing.

How is it that the anti-Common Core sentiment and anger over testing that many parents have expressed publicly - including to Cuomo himself - didn't make it to Cuomo's education reform list?

Let's face it, it's because Cuomo's ed deform agenda was drafted by his ed deform constituency - the ones who provided lots of cash to him both before and during the campaign season - not members of the public he met on he campaign trail.

Hell, he barely met anybody on the campaign trail anyway, since he barely campaigned publicly, and even when he did, he stayed as far away from people as possible.

So Cuomo's full of crap when he says this agenda is coming in response to concerns the members of the public had that they expressed to him on the campaign trail.

This list came from his charter school and education reform/hedge fundie donors, pure and simple.

That's one way he can be beat on this issue.

There is a lot of anger from parents and teachers over education and that anger can be used to bring people together to fight Cuomo on his threat to "break" the school system.

Cuomo has decided to ignore a lot of what is really pissing parents off to focus on stuff that his education reform constituency wants.

I'm going to bet that much of what that reform constituency wants is a lot different than what so many of the parents who are complaining about CCSS and testing want.