Perdido 03

Perdido 03

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Andrew Cuomo Calls Public School System "Single Greatest Failure Of The State"

In case you're thinking tomorrow won't be an all-out assault on public schools and public school teachers, see this statement from today:

Cuomo has said repeatedly that he’s dissatisfied with what he calls the “education industry”, which he labeled the most “sophisticated political machine” in Albany. Cuomo, who has tangled with the teachers union in recent months, reiterated those concerns on Tuesday.

“It probably has been the single greatest failure of the state in many ways,” Cuomo said.

Cuomo says reform, including an overhaul of teacher performance reviews and fixing bad schools are at the top of his agenda. And he says simply spending "more money" is not the answer. He says it’s been tried in the past, with little improvement.

“And you know what it’s gotten us?” Cuomo asked. “A larger and larger bureaucracy, and higher salaries for the people who work in the education industry.”

As I pointed out earlier, one of the biggest concerns New Yorkers have with education is the Common Core implementation - 49% say it should be stopped while only 34% say it should continue.

Unstated by Cuomo is how the "failure" he claims for New York schools is in so many ways tied to Common Core - the CCSS tests that were rigged for 70% failure rates, the CCSS rollout by NYSED that even Cuomo acknowledged was a mess.

It's a shame the teachers unions support Common Core - sure would be a great pushback against this extreme rhetoric out of Cuomo.

At any rate, I wonder if he isn't going to overdo it with this rhetoric?

Seriously, the public school system is the "single greatest failure in the state"?

I dunno, maybe he's polled this and thinks he's got a winner here.

But it seems to me to declare the public school system the single greatest failure in the state is going to find some decent pushback from a lot of ordinary New Yorkers who don't see that about their own schools and may wonder how it is that Cuomo can claim this a year after he blamed SED and the Regents for the poor Common Core rollout.

14 comments:

  1. Thems fighting words from the jackass ubergovernor Cuomo!

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    1. Sure would feel better if we had a union that was going to, you know, fight back. Dunno about you, but I don't consider the genius move by UFT to have a Twitter pushback much of a fight.

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    2. Governor Cuomo must have been educated in a different state than NY, or is the education he received in NY is what has made him a success. When are parents going to be held accountable for the failure of their children. Teachers have students 7 hours a day. what about the other 17 hours, who's educating them than?

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  2. I was horrified when I was teaching under Bloomberg and now I am terrified what is coming down the pike come Wednesday. The worst part is that our very union is complicit in all this. And the most ironic thing about all this crap is that teachers in wealthy districts like Rye and Larchomont are also going to have to deal with the nonsense that Cuomo puts into law.

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    1. That might be one of the saving graces here - his "reforms" will affect wealthy districts, bring about even more churn then CCSS already did, add more time/energy/money spent on compliance. It's possible that might be the thing that undoes some of this in the end. Maybe.

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  3. Something tells me that he's overreaching here. Who is he grandstanding this "greatest failure of the state" to?
    I believe that the vast majority of public school parents are happy with their children's teachers. The vast majority of public school parents see teachers as hardworking, caring, dedicated individuals who want to see their students soar.
    In the more educated areas, more progressive, aware, and thinking locales, parents are very disturbed by the testing that marches to the beat of the common core.
    Maybe he will fall flat on his face.
    Ahhhh, another Moreland Commission mistep leading to political quicksand.

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    1. Yes, I;m wondering that as well. As I wrote to the comment above, the "reforms" he's looking to impose are going to affect wealthy districts and those parents aren't going to like a lot of the garbage he's pushing. More compliance for APPR? More junk evals? More emphasis on testing? I dunno, but I don't think LoHud parents are going go for that, nor parents on L.I. We'll see...

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  4. I thought that the Cuomo interference and bullying of the Moreland commision was the "single greatest failure of the state", namely the failure to clean up the widespread corruption in Albany. By the way, Cuomo, why did your campaign pay $ 100,000 to your criminal defense lawyer?

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    1. You're right -your comment is worthy of its own post!

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  5. A disgrace!
    This coming from a democratic governor. The president destroyed us with RTTT, another democrat.

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    1. I don't think much of Democrats these days - not since Clinton. They're all corporatists.

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  6. Clinton brought us NAFTA and the repeal of Glass-Stegall which have created a climate conducive to RTTT and Cuomo. Might have to go back to LBJ to find the last Democrat who was, in fact, a Democrat.

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  7. As for his crack about salaries, he should realize that a master's degree is a minimum requirement in NY. What does he think teachers deserve? If he ever did it, he would realize it is tough work! Maybe he's a mysogynist that enjoys bullying women. 75% teachers are women. I don't see him picking on fire fighters or police officers.

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  8. If Cuomo can break the teacher's union in NYstate he'll be the model that other states will follow. Get your life boats ready for the Wall St $ tsunami for his loyalty and speed.

    Too bad Randi is content to play like she cares about teachers & kids.
    www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2014/12/01/heres-a-plan-to-turn-around-u-s-education-and-generate-225-trillion

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