Conspicuously absent from the governor's coming attractions – but expected to be a focal point in his speech – are his promised plans to break the public schools "monopoly." He's made it pretty clear that he intends to tighten the state's widely disliked teacher-evaluation system. If proposes keeping the system pretty much as is, but changing the scoring so that few teachers get good grades, the response from the educational world will be dark.
The governor seems to think that he is taking on NYSUT, the state's largest teachers union. But he has not addressed the fact that many school district officials say the current system is wasteful, ineffective and does not help to identify teachers who need to be supported or fired. District officials from the Lower Hudson Valley have begged to be consulted on how to re-write the system (after commissioning a study that raised serious questions about the whole thing), to no avail.
The amount of time, money, energy and resources that go into APPR compliance is dragging educators all across the state down.
And it's only going to get worse if Cuomo gets to do what he has promised he wants to do - "break" the public schools.
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