In a press release yesterday expressing “sympathy” for parents, Cuomo called for a review of the Common Core in New York, blaming the State Education Department’s implementation while vowing to revive his Common Core panel to review the mess.
Parents across the state are not fools.
They know the problems are hardly limited to implementation of the Common Core, but the actual Common Core itself, its excessive testing, and a fundamentally broken teacher evaluation system.
Parents know that Andrew Cuomo is not part of the solution. Cuomo is the problem.
It is Cuomo who forced his unproven teacher evaluation system down parents’ throats.
It is Cuomo who slashed and underfunded the State Education Department staffing.
It is Cuomo who accepted ‘Big Donor’ campaign money and enabled the build-up of a privatized, unaccountable shadow government within the State Education Department –The Regents Research Fellows—who created the “Implementation” mess Cuomo now blames.
It is Cuomo who repeatedly tramples on the New York State Constitution–which gives a NY Governor NO authority over education policy—with his serial habit of forming pro-corporate education reform stacked panels, complete with Washington lobbyists salivating to eliminate parental consent for data profiling of children.
Parents of New York are outraged and will continue the fight to take back their schools and classrooms from the Albany shenanigans of Andrew Cuomo, Merryl Tisch and MaryEllen Elia.
Cuomo's impaneling a commission from the same pre-existing education reform commission that acted as a rubber stamp for his policies in 2014.
Parents and teachers know this is nothing more than a sham PR move to help Cuomo distance himself from his own education reform policies.
But he cannot - they are his.
He shoved APPR based upon Common Core testing into the budget last April, he supports Common Core and the Endless Testing regime, he's looking for some diversionary tactic to fool people into thinking he's changing the reform agenda in New York.
But parents are not fools, nor are teachers - there will be no substantive changes this time around anymore than there were the last time.
Cuomo is the problem and no sham commission will erase that fact.
Your move, governor.
This is Andrew Cuomo, version 2.0. Unfortunately, as much as many parents across the state know that Cuomo's education policies have failed, there are quite a few who STILL (despite all the mounting evidence against Cuomo) believe Cuomo's rhetoric. I've said this before and it needs to be repeated: when are a few responsible, young, energetic and committed journalists going to start exposing all the B.S. and lies to expose Cuomo for what he really is: a political sellout, a bully and a money-loving sham of a governor? The reason he embraces charter schools is simple: $$$ and support from NYC's poorest who see charter schools as a quick solution to a problem that actually stems from disproportionate and system-wide reductions in education spending for many years. If Cuomo and his handlers were REALLY smart, they'd only take a look to the west and the rapid demise of another buffoon masquerading as the governor of New Jersey. These two goons (Cuomo and Christie) are despised and have so poisoned their own chances of success that all we can do is count the days remaining before they're dumped by the electorate of each state.
ReplyDeleteThe other issue is that Merryl Tisch is still "hiding" behind the curtain. Cuomo is keeping her on hand so that he has a "whipping girl" to blame so that when NY-SED collapses in the near future, Cuomo will have someone else to blame.
So, Cuomo, Tisch and Elia represent the old, dysfunctional Albany despite the fact that the tables are slowly turning. When the Lederman case is finally adjudicated and we have what I think will be a certain degree of satisfaction, watch as the ship empties of "all the rats" and the finger pointing begins in earnest. Cuomo's press conference to announce that "gee, Common Core is a mess in NYS" come too late. The saps will believe what they want to: that Cuomo is innocent but, the proof will be in the fast retreat to a higher ground.
I think we're in for a really good show, folks. Can't wait!
Thats what people get for not building the party. After citizens united etc it is imperative that working people create an autonomous party--the other two cant resist the money. Insofar as we fail to do so we get to watch andy the clown dance the sad spectacle of our passivity...it is a costly show
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