Thursday, January 15, 2015

Cuomo Promises Full Reform Agenda On Education Policy

Never let it be said that the NY governor who won re-election with the fewest votes since FDR in 1930 isn't thinking big for his second term:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo pledged on Thursday to have a “full agenda” proposing changes to the state’s education policy in his State of the State, due to be given next Wednesday.
“When we talk about education, the state government in Albany tends to focus on the bureaucracy of education — the lobbyists that protect the bureaucracy of education,” Cuomo said in Rochester earlier today. “My point is, I want to focus on the students.”
Cuomo would not offer specifics on what he plans to propose next week.
However, he has broadly hinted at plans to push for greater control of education decision making as well as strengthening charter schools. Cuomo has also suggested potentially tying funding to teacher accountability and school performance as well as a broad overhaul of how evaluations are conducted following a veto of a measure meant to slow down the impact of Common Core testing.
“Let’s focus on the goal, the goal is to educate students, not to grow a bureaucracy — not to raise a budget so the bureaucracy gets more money,” Cuomo said.

Cuomo doesn't want to grow the education bureaucracy?

What does he think happens every time the state adds more mandates and regulations?

Does he think his new "stringent" APPR evaluation system will work on its own?

The more honest statement out of Cuomo would have been "I want to take money from the public schools and give it to my charter school friends and donors."

He ought to be honest about that.

As for smearing critics of reform plans as "lobbyists" that "protect the bureaucracy of education," does he think we've forgotten how much charter school lobbying money he's gobbled up over the last four years?

I haven't.

In any case, Cuomo's planning a full assault on public schools and teachers, the indication from the unions is that they don't plan to fight him on this so long as some more money is given to districts and, basically, if you're a teacher just trying to do your job, it's going to get much, much harder because of the added layers of compliance and so-called accountability Cuomo plans.

That is, if you still have a job after it's all said and done.

2 comments:

  1. COLONEL TRAUTMAN: "It's over Johnny, It's over!
    JOHN RAMBO: "Nothing is over!"

    ReplyDelete
  2. Focus on students? Isn’t it what you should do every single day? Aren’t students the priority? American system of education keeps in failing! They can’t accomplish even a single essay writing and they turn here EssayOnlineStore (this is just a sample website). Have you noticed how every year (mostly in the beginning) we hear about how it is necessary to improve education….a year goes by…and in the end of the year we hear pretty much unpleasant news. My point is, stop talking, begin acting, people!

    ReplyDelete