Christie, Like His Pal Cuomo, Is Full Of Shit On Common Core

Chris Christie, once a great supporter of Common Core, turned on the standards as he started to gear up for a run for president in a Republican Party where the Core is disdained.

Christie, as on other issues like gun control or Planned Parenthood, likes to muddy the waters on just how much support he has had for the Core in the past and continues to have for the Core now.

For example:

During Thursday night's Republican debate in South Carolina, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was attacked on several fronts for an allegedly left-leaning past, including his supposed support for Common Core education standards, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Planned Parenthood.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called out his rival for propping up Common Core, the reading and math standards implemented in 42 states, plus the District of Columbia, and widely reviled by conservatives as acts of federal overreach.

"I like Chris Christie, but we can not afford to have a president of the United States that supports Common Core," Rubio said on the main stage.

Christie refuted that: "Common Core has been eliminated in New Jersey."

But Christie, who once supported the education standards, has flipped on the issue since last year.

In May, the governor asked New Jersey's department of education to review the implementation of Common Core in the state's school system.

But according to NJ.com, earlier this week, the panel charged with reviewing the standards recommended that 84 percent of them remain in place, with slight revisions to the rest. Common Core, the news site reported, does "still have a place in New Jersey classrooms."

Common Core has been eliminated in New Jersey?

Hardly.

Not if 84% of the standards remain in place, with slight revisions to the rest, and the state tests still based upon the Core (and the opt-out option for the test soon to be eliminated.)

The same game is happening in New York, where Christie's Port Authority-pal Andrew Cuomo is playing similar deceptions on New Yorkers, claiming Common Core is going to get a "total reboot" when his Common Core Task Force actually recommended that the "instructional focus" of the Core remain in place.

In short, New York's going to get a similar 16% or so tweaking to the Core, where most of the standards remain in place and the others get minor changes so that Cuomo can say the Core no longer exists in New York State.

Christie and Cuomo are full of shit together on education, full of shit together on Common Core, and full of shit together on a lot of other issues (including the Port Authority.)

Quite frankly, the emblems for both the Christie Presidential campaign and the Cuomo 2018 re-election campaign ought to be two big piles of shit.

And if that's a little too crass, well, so is the shit these two crooks are looking to get away with on a whole host of things - including Common Core.

MaryEllen Elia Says You'll Be Able To "Touch" All The Wonderful Changes Coming In Education

MaryEllen Elia, on the propaganda trail:

ALBANY — Substantive changes will be made to testing, teacher evaluations and the Common Core learning standards in New York State, state education commissioner MaryEllen Elia said in a television interview set to air Monday night.

“We’ve already started it,” Elia told WCNY’s Susan Arbetter on "Connect:NY," which airs on PBS.

...

 She said she understands the concerns of test refusal groups, which have said they will keep urging parents to opt their children out of the state and local exams linked to the teacher evaluations until they see change.

“I understand people saying, ‘Let me see it. I want to see it. I want to touch it. I want to make sure it’s there.’ Well, they’re going to be able to see it and touch it. That’s what we’re doing,” she said.

Uh, huh.

Sure you are.

So far, here's a rundown of the wonderful changes we've gotten in education policy.

Changing the Common Core but keeping the "instructional focus" the same.

De-linking state tests from teacher evaluations for four years, but elevating "local" tests to take their place.

Dunno how delusional Elia is, but if she thinks rhetoric and tweaks are going to fool anybody, she's kidding herself.

Cuomo/Regents Bait And Switch On Testing/Teacher Evaluations Will Not End Opt Out

From the NY Post:

Opponents of Common Core standards are urging parents to boycott next year’s state math and English exams, despite the state imposing a four-year freeze on using the results to grade students or teachers.

NYS Allies for Public Education said Wednesday that state and local school districts are administering too many tests and want the Common Core standards scrapped completely.

“We will continue to refuse to allow our children to participate in this system until all harmful reforms are removed,” said a spokesman for the group LI Opt Out.

About 200,000 students boycotted the last exams.

Teachers are still going to be evaluated using test scores and, depending upon the district, may still be evaluated using the state tests.

The Common Core isn't going anywhere, the Cuomo Common Core Task Force called for no "instructional shift" from the Common Core, just tweaks around the edges so they can say "Changes are being made!"

This bait and switch will not fool us.

The union leadership can fall all over itself declaring this a "win" for students, parents and teachers against the corporate reform movement, but those of us in schools know differently.

Nothing's changed, the Endless Testing regime lives on, APPR continues to use test scores to rate teachers, and with the Cuomo task force calling for a switch to "local" tests for APPR, there will be a whole lot more testing in the system next year.

The fight goes on.

Chris Gibson: Don't Trust Cuomo For Common Core Fixes

From the Daily Star:

Calling the Common Core curriculum “a mistake,” Rep. Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook, called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo Tuesday to “start over” and to bring parents, teachers and administrators into the discussion.

“It’s disappointing that the governor needed a task force to find out what parents, teachers and administrators have been saying all along — that Common Core has been a mistake,” the congressman said in an interview from Washington.

“We should roll this back and start over,” added Gibson, who has indicated he is planning to mount a campaign for statewide office in 2018, the year the two-term Cuomo faces re-election.

...

Cuomo has since hit the brakes on his drive to use the test scores to rate teachers, and last week a Cuomo-appointed task force set up to review Common Core recommended that the state adopt its own curriculum standards. It also urged that the student test scores not be used in teacher evaluations until the 2019-2020 school year.
Gibson questioned whether Cuomo’s embrace of the task force recommendations is sincere.

“He is using words suggesting he is listening now but we’re going to have to watch him closely,” the congressman said.

Close watch of Cuomo and the Board of Regents shows how they're double dealing with the "de-coupling" of test scores from the APPR teacher evaluation system, shifting part of the test component from "state" tests to "local" tests that may, in fact, be "state" tests (see here and here.)

So indeed, watching Cuomo closely as he "fixes" the Common Core problem in New York is warranted.

We know that his Common Core task force recommended little instructional shift from the Core, more of a renaming of the Core than a changing of the Core, even as they recommended developing "new standards."

As Kate Taylor reported in the NY Times in her piece on the task force recommendations:

It is unclear how different the new standards will be from the Common Core. The task force’s report calls for enlisting educators and parents to help create them, and it recommends modifying the standards for kindergarten, first grade and second grade so that they are more age-appropriate. But it says little about the standards in the upper grades, in which students take state tests, and it says that, generally, the new standards should “maintain the key instructional shifts set forth in the Common Core.”

Cuomo said he wanted a "total reboot" of Common Core and education policy when he first announced the creation of his task force, but essentially what we're getting with both Common Core and the test score component in the APPR teacher evaluation system is a little tweaking at the edges so that they can say "Everything's changed!" but in practicality, nothing really has.

Somebody on twitter said last night, you can tell when Cuomo's lying or deceiving you because he's talking.

That's pretty much what we've gotten from him in his "total reboot" of education policy - lies and deceptions, along with a couple of misdirections.

So Gibson is right - Cuomo is not to be trusted, he is to be watched closely throughout this process and, in the end, when he issues his agenda during his State of the State/budget address (assuming he's not under indictment by that point), called out for his betrayal of public education and the public trust and fought on every agenda point.

We will not be fooled.

Not Much Real Change To The Standards In Those Cuomo Common Core Task Force Recommendations

The union leaders are shouting "Hosanna!" over the recommendations that Cuomo's Common Core Review Task Force released yesterday, but I'm less impressed by the whole thing.

Here's how Kate Taylor of the NY Times wrote this up:

A task force Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo created is calling for changes in what New York State students learn and how they are assessed, in a set of recommendations released on Thursday.

The task force, which Mr. Cuomo convened in response to the concerns of parents and teachers, is also calling for the state not to use its test scores to evaluate teachers through the 2018-19 school year, to allow time to develop the new standards and tests.

The report is the latest step in the state’s retreat from the Common Core school standards, national benchmarks that New York adopted in 2010, and especially from using student test scores in teacher evaluations. It comes in the wake of a rebellion by parents against testing; one-fifth of students did not sit for the state exams this year, a fourfold increase from the previous year.

But is it a "retreat"?

It is unclear how different the new standards will be from the Common Core. The task force’s report calls for enlisting educators and parents to help create them, and it recommends modifying the standards for kindergarten, first grade and second grade so that they are more age-appropriate. But it says little about the standards in the upper grades, in which students take state tests, and it says that, generally, the new standards should “maintain the key instructional shifts set forth in the Common Core.”

Gee, that doesn't sound like real change to me?

That sounds like the Common Core State Standards will get some minor tweaks and stay in place.

Sounded that way to one of the Common Core shills too:

“The report makes clear that the current standards and assessments will stay in place,” said Stephen Sigmund, the executive director of High Achievement New York, a coalition of groups that promote the standards.

So long as the math and ELA Regents exams stay as they are, there will be no practical change from what's being taught in schools.

Since the Regents tests are Common Core-aligned and schools are being held accountable for the results (and can be put into state receivership if they're really low), you can bet that not much will shift in math and ELA classes in high schools when it comes to teaching the Common Core standards.

In short, the Endless Testing regime and Endless Test Prep tied to Common Core will remain alive and well so long as what gets tested is Common Core- or Common Core-Lite.

The same will be true for the tested grades in elementary and middle schools if the tests remain Common Core-aligned and are used to rate schools.

I'm also told that the "local" assessment scores will remain as part of APPR, which, if true, means "junk science" VAM is alive and well in teacher evaluations, even before the "moratorium" that the task force called for having on using state test scores in APPR expires and junk science VAM using state test scores returns to APPR.

So, what real change did we really get yesterday in these recommendation?

The UFT and NYSUT can declare victory all they want with these recommendations.

What I see here is one big PR event made to look like a lot more is going to go on then really will go on.

Cuomo's Common Core/APPR Dog And Pony Show

I read through Keshia Clukey's Politico NY post on the Common Core task force recommendations that are set to be issued to Governor Cuomo this week and the sense I was left with is, they're going to tweak the standards just enough to claim they're not Common Core anymore, they're going to look to change the name to something else (something like "New York State Standards," though I'm partial to "Cuomo Core" myself) and they're going to declare "Mission Accomplished!"

In short, it looks like we're in for another Cuomo dog and pony show special, not that this comes as a surprise.

Many of us thought this CCSS review was nothing more than Cuomo and the powers-that-be in Albany trying to stage manage the politics and optics around the Common Core and the Opt Out protests.

We knew they want to change as little as possible other than the perceptions around the policies.

NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia indicated that when she said she wanted to "repaint" the Common Core so that parents would like it better.

Dunno how stupid they think people are, but I would be very, very surprised if the parents and teachers who are part of the Common Core and Opt Out protests fall for this charade they've got coming.

APPR will get a tweak too - they'll probably shove through some temporary "moratorium" to "de-couple" test scores from teacher ratings for a set period of time, which means test scores will eventually be placed back into the APPR formula.

Again, I would be very, very surprised if many people are fooled that a moratorium is substantive change, as by definition, a "moratorium" is nothing more than a "delay."

As far as I can tell, Elia's paint job on the Common Core is a bit of scenery for Cuomo's Common Core/APPR Dog and Pony Show that's set to open to previews this month and get a starring role in Cuomo's State of the State/budget address in January.

Thoughts?

Cuomo Common Core Panel May Release Recommendations This Week

From Yancey Roy at Newsday:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s latest Common Core commission could report its recommendations this week — in time to hand them off to the state Board of Regents meeting before its next meeting, Dec. 14.

One of the key questions is whether Cuomo will favor reducing or even eliminating the link between teachers’ evaluations and students’ scores on standardized tests.

The Democrat has changed the evaluation system twice during his tenure. Earlier this year, Cuomo pushed for test scores to account for as much as 50 percent of a teacher’s assessment. Meanwhile, the number of students boycotting the tests has continued to climb, to more than 200,000 last spring.

I maintain that they'll do something that looks like substantive change from afar but, when you get up really close to it, isn't so substantive after all.

Tweaks to Common Core, perhaps a renaming (Cuomo Core?), a moratorium on using test scores in teacher evaluations, an extension of the moratorium on test scores for students (which Cuomo himself called "meaningless") - that's what I expect coming out of this.

And make no mistake, life will go on in schools pretty much as it does now, with students reading little fiction, writing argumentative essays in every class, doing the EngageNY curriculum (drill and kill, drill and kill) and doing their incomprehensible math homework and crying at the table over it while teachers have more and more pressure put on them via the Danielson drive-by to "Always Be Assessing!"

Chris Gibson: If NY Sticks With Common Core And Heavy-Handed Education Policy, It's All On Cuomo

Congressman Chris Gibson on the "Every Child Succeeds Act," the education bill that passed the House this week and is expected to pass the Senate and be signed into law by President Obama before Christmas:

New York educators and legislators are hopeful the passage of a bipartisan education bill in the House of Representatives this week will convince the state to abandon the more controversial aspects of its own education reform.

The bill, the Every Student Succeeds Act, dismantles George W. Bush's signature No Child Left Behind Act and shifts authority over the nation's public schools from the federal government back to states and local school districts. Not only does it let states to decide whether student test scores are an appropriate way to evaluate teachers or assess schools, but it also prohibits the federal government from mandating or even incentivizing states to adopt learning standards like the Common Core.

 ...

U.S. Rep. Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook, called the bill a major step forward in reducing federal overreach in classrooms and in empowering states and localities. The bill gives New York the flexibility to decide how it wants to test its children and evaluate teachers, he said.

"The ball is now clearly in the governor's court," he said. "We have so many parents and teachers and students that have been upset with Common Core. Well, this bill allows states to withdraw from Common Core without penalty. In addition, the state has taken a heavy-handed approach to schools that are failing, and that has been in part driven by the federal government. That federal overreach is now gone, so anything the governor continues to do in education will be from his own volition. He can no longer lean on the federal government."

I remain skeptical that Cuomo, who's completely on the take from the education reform industrial complex/Heavy Fund Managers For Education Reform, will want to derail the heavy-handed education policy he's helped impose onto the state, including Common Core, the Endless Testing regime, punitive teacher evaluations and a state receivership program that allows the state to take over "failing" public schools and hand them to private entities.

But he certainly wants to make it look like changes are coming.

Thus the Common Core Task Force, thus the trial balloons in the Times about de-linking test scores from APPR, thus the soothing words from him about education policy changes coming.

With his approval numbers in the toilet and his approval numbers on education even worse than that, Cuomo's got to walk a tightrope here, making it look like he's bringing about real change to education policy while assuring his owners, er, campaign donors in the hedge fundie/education reform world that he's still pursuing their agenda.

As Gibson notes, with NCLB III in place, Cuomo's going to have one less scapegoat to blame for the toxic, punitive education reform agenda he wants imposed on the children, teachers and schools of this state.

Dick Parsons Claims Cuomo Hasn't Meddled In Common Core Task Force

This statement from Dick Parsons, Cuomo's Common Core Task Force chairman, is laughable:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s task force on academic standards and testing expects to hand in its much anticipated report this month, amid a continuing push by teachers unions to end the use of student test scores in teacher evaluations.

The 15-member Common Core Task Force wasn’t asked to explore the politically charged issue of evaluations, but several members said the subject came up so often in public hearings this fall that the group might weigh in on them. Several said they discussed whether to recommend a moratorium on using tests in evaluations, or possibly a reduction in their weight.

Richard Parsons, chairman of the New York task force and former chairman of Citigroup Inc., said Wednesday his group was “in the middle of sausage making” and hoped to hand its report to the governor in the next 10 days.

Mr. Parsons said Mr. Cuomo hadn’t pressed for any particular outcome. “He has not tried to put his thumb on the scale,” Mr. Parsons said. “I would hope that he would review it and take it seriously.”

 Cuomo hasn't "tried to put his thumb on the scale"?

Then what was the trial balloon that was sent forth into the NY Times about the governor considering delinking test scores from his vaunted APPR teacher evaluation system or putting a "moratorium" on the use of the scores on teacher ratings?

That sure sounded like the governor "putting his thumb on the scale" to me - especially when Politico NY reported that members of the task force were "confused" when Cuomo put the trial balloon about delinking scores and/or putting a moratorium on their use in teacher ratings into the NY Times:

After learning that Gov. Andrew Cuomo may be looking to minimize the impact of test scores on teacher evaluations, the Common Core task force will likely weigh in on the controversy, recommending either the decoupling of the two or a moratorium on the use of the scores, according to a source familiar with the panel. The task force had not been asked to consider the evaluation process, and until now, it has not focused on it. When Cuomo put together the panel in September, he charged its 15 members with reviewing the Common Core learning standards, calling for a "total reboot" of the state's education system. The recommendations are due to the governor this month prior to his State of the State address in January. 

Members of the task force told POLITICO they were confused by comments made in a New York Times story last week on Cuomo's possible retreat from the politically fraught linkage of test scores and teacher evaluations, because the administration's statement made it seem as though they were looking at the evaluation system when, in fact, they have not been. "We're not focusing on that now ... we're focusing on what the task force was brought together for," said task force member Sam Radford III, president of the District Parent Coordinating Council of Buffalo. http://politi.co/1O2pfrb

Parsons can say whatever he wants about Cuomo not trying to influence the Common Core task force.

We know from the past that Cuomo has influenced and/or rigged every commission, panel and task force he's put together (from the Moreland Commission on Public Utilities to the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption to the education commission Todd Hathaway sat on), so we knew he would try to influence and/or rig this one.

And sure enough, by sending the trial balloon about test scores to the Times, Cuomo's gotten heavy-handed publicly with this Common Core task force.

Lord only knows what he's got his henchmen and henchwomen doing to influence the task force behind the scenes.

Cuomo's Flip-Flop On The Common Core Task Force And Teacher Evaluations

We've already seen one flip-flop from Governor Cuomo this week on the Moreland Commission (which he once claimed would have investigative and prosecutorial powers but yesterday claimed was nothing more than an exercise in public education - as if the public needed to be better educated about how corrupt Albany politicians are!)

Now we learn, courtesy of Politico NY, about another flip-flop from Cuomo - this one of teacher evaluations:

After learning that Gov. Andrew Cuomo may be looking to minimize the impact of test scores on teacher evaluations, the Common Core task force will likely weigh in on the controversy, recommending either the decoupling of the two or a moratorium on the use of the scores, according to a source familiar with the panel. The task force had not been asked to consider the evaluation process, and until now, it has not focused on it. When Cuomo put together the panel in September, he charged its 15 members with reviewing the Common Core learning standards, calling for a "total reboot" of the state's education system. The recommendations are due to the governor this month prior to his State of the State address in January. 

Members of the task force told POLITICO they were confused by comments made in a New York Times story last week on Cuomo's possible retreat from the politically fraught linkage of test scores and teacher evaluations, because the administration's statement made it seem as though they were looking at the evaluation system when, in fact, they have not been. "We're not focusing on that now ... we're focusing on what the task force was brought together for," said task force member Sam Radford III, president of the District Parent Coordinating Council of Buffalo. http://politi.co/1O2pfrb

When Cuomo first called for conveing the task force, he made it clear that evaluation revisions were not part of the task force's work.

Now all of a sudden, it seems they are - at least if you're reading the whoosing air coming from the various trial balloons Cuomo keeps sending out about what's going to happen with teacher evaluations.

I remain skeptical about all of this.

As always with Cuomo, it's safe to say "Keep your hand on your wallet and watch him closely."

Be Skeptical Of Those Changes To Education That Cuomo Is Said To Be Considering

So says Fred LeBrun, writing about that NY Times piece that reported Andrew Cuomo is said to be thinking about "decoupling" test scores from his vaunted APPR teacher evaluation system:

We're being told Gov. Andrew Cuomo is prepared to contradict himself and reverse course on tying public school teacher evaluations to student test scores.

The suggestion has been planted that behind the scenes the governor is now pushing for a significant decoupling of test scores to teacher evaluations.

It seems even a total delinking is under discussion, a 180 degree shift from his imposed law passed this spring hardwiring a teacher's survival to student scores on state mandated Common Core driven tests.

...

If what we're being told is true, this reversal by the governor would be a long overdue triumph of common sense over ideological idiocy.

If.

We'll believe it when we see the law changed. A recurring observation about our sitting governor is that he can't be trusted. He'll say anything, but what he means and really hopes to achieve is often hard to decipher and more often than not, a study in misdirection.

LeBrun points out that the best way for the governor to change education policy is to go back to the Legislature and have the law changed - but Cuomo won't do that:

In the Times story, Malatras tellingly dismisses the strategy of asking the Legislature to change the language of the law when it comes to setting the percentage and makeup of test scores counting for teacher evaluations.

''There's just no need to go back to the Legislature,'' Malatras told the Times, because the State Education Department (SED) ''has the ability to dial up and dial down all sorts of things in the regulations.'' This is the opposite of what we're hearing from the Board of Regents and State Ed, which have said repeatedly the language of the Cuomo statute gives them very little wiggle room for maneuvering.

So what's Cuomo doing?

Perhaps another one of those head fakes that is made to fool you into thinking he's making substantive changes when he's really not making substantive changes:

Now the buzzword being sent up the flagpole by the governor, through Malatras, is ''moratorium.'' Putting a moratorium on the use of test scores in evaluations. But a moratorium is merely a sophisticated pause, and not substantive change.

When the NY Times story first went up, I expressed skepticism about the changes Cuomo was supposed to be considering, as did many Perdido Street School blog readers who left comments.

Fred LeBrun, an astute observer of Albany politics in general and Andrew Cuomo in particular, is skeptical too.

Here's the reality: Cuomo wants to make it look like he's pushing for substantive policy changes to education in order to assuage the 220,000+ who opted their children out of the state tests last school year.

He also wants to continue to make his hedge fund manager/education reformer donors, the ones who paid him for the education reform agenda he's pushing, happy.

So, a head fake from the governor is in order - talk a good game about substantive changes to education policy, but make sure the education laws that are now on the books, including APPR, are not changed, but rather "tweaked" via NYSED dictate.

No matter - if Cuomo thinks parents and teachers will be fooled by a "moratorium" on using test scores in APPR or tweaks to Common Core (like renaming the standards but keeping the "core"), he's got another thing coming.

As LeBrun writes:

The governor in the past has recognized this when he's called for a ''complete reboot.'' The old boots need to be thrown out.

Now we wait to see what the governor's task force has to say, which is the governor in thin disguise, and what the newly invigorated Board of Regents and the state Assembly come up with. Which better materialize into new law that rewrites Common Core and teacher evaluations.

Because you can be sure Opt Out will not be fooled. 

Indeed, Opt Out will not be fooled.

But that doesn't mean that corrupt Governor Cuomo, a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of the Hedge Fund Managers For Education Reform, won't try anyway.

NY Times: Cuomo Reportedly Set To Reduce Role Of Testing In His Vaunted APPR Teacher Evaluation System

It's amazing what 220,000+ opt outs and poll numbers mired in the very low 40's will do to a politician's take on a particular issue:

Less than a year ago, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York proclaimed that the key to transforming the state’s education system was tougher evaluations for teachers, and he pushed through changes that increased the weight of student test scores in teachers’ ratings.

Now, facing a parents’ revolt against testing, the state is poised to change course and reduce the role of test scores in evaluations. And according to two people involved in making state education policy, Mr. Cuomo has been quietly pushing for a reduction, even to zero. That would represent an about-face from January, when the governor called for test scores to determine 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation.

There's some conjecture on just what this "reduction" will be:

The idea that Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, is pushing for the changes comes from several different avenues. According to one of the education policy makers, Mr. Malatras said in a conversation that the administration wanted to decouple test scores and evaluations. The other person reported having spoken with people who had similar conversations with the administration.

Two members of the Board of Regents, the body that sets state education policy, said they had heard that Mr. Cuomo was pushing for a moratorium on the use of test scores in evaluations. The two board members, Kathleen M. Cashin and Betty A. Rosa, both said they would heartily support such a change.

There's a big difference between "decoupling" tests scores from evaluations and having a "moratorium" on test scores being used in evaluations, so as always with this stuff, the devil is in the details.

Cuomo, through shill Malatras, is claiming nothing has been determined yet, that they're waiting for findings from the vaunted Common Core Review task force that Cuomo announced in September - but that's jive of course.

Cuomo has controlled every commission, panel and task force he's put together, from the two Moreland Commissions (one after Sandy on utilities, one on corruption that has him under federal investigation for witness tampering and possible obstruction) to the other two education commissions he put together (just ask Todd Hathaway who disagreed with the findings of the task force he sat on but had his name signed to the pre-determined report nonetheless!)

So what Cuomo wants, Cuomo's Common Core Review task force will find.

And it looks as if the governor, reeling from the bad press and bad polling on education, has perhaps decided the suitcases full of cash he gets from ed deformers aren't enough to keep him pushing ed deform policies in toto:

In New York, Mr. Cuomo’s push to give test scores more weight in evaluations helped propel a widespread test refusal movement this year, centered on Long Island. More than 200,000 of the nearly 1.2 million students expected to take the annual reading and math tests did not sit for them in 2015. At some schools, as many as 75 percent of students opted out.

Long Islanders tend to be swing voters, and education is a top concern of theirs, given the high percentage of school-age children and the role that local schools’ reputations have on real estate values, said Lawrence Levy, the executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University.

“Considering how his numbers fell off in suburban communities in the last election, I thought that the governor had to pay close attention to the desires and the demands of these suburban swing constituencies,” Mr. Levy said.

One final point to make on this - there's a likelihood that all they're going to do is call for a "moratorium" on test score use in APPR or a "moratorium" on the "penalties" teachers would suffer for low scores:

“A moratorium is under consideration,” said State Senator Carl L. Marcellino, a Long Island Republican, chairman of the Education Committee and a member of the task force.

The Board of Regents would quite likely approve a moratorium or any other step to reduce the role of test scores in evaluations. Until recently, a majority of the board supported tying test scores to evaluations, but the Legislature elected several new members this year who are critical of that policy.

This "moratorium" could come based upon the 50% test score criteria Cuomo imposed in the budget or it could be lowered to something like 20% (which is apparently what NYSED MaryEllen Elia thinks it ought to be.)

In any case, the "big changes" to education policy Cuomo promised look to be coming.

Whether they're substantive changes or more jive made to look like substantive changes remains to be seen.

Having watched Cuomo closely now for a few years, I remain skeptical.

But the low approval numbers in the polling, the especially low education numbers in those polls, the high opt out rates (with the numbers set to go even higher this year if the status quo continues) and the even higher "hardship waivers" districts got on Cuomo's vaunted new APPR teacher evaluation system with the 50% test score component seem to have weakened some of Cuomo's resolve to continue to scapegoat teachers for all the ills in the education system.

Cuomo Administration Official Criticizes MaryEllen Elia's Common Core Plan

Division between Cuomo and Elia/NYSED on Common Core and the Endless Testing regime (via State of Politics):

As the battle over potential changes to the controversial Common Core standards begins to take shape in New York, an official in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration is reacting cooly to a package of preliminary recommendations being made by Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia.

The commissioner, who outlined the recommendations on Monday ahead of the department’s task force to revise and study the standards, suggested

-Extending the current freeze on the reporting of test results for grades three through eight on permanent records through the 2018-19 school year
-The creation of an advisory council for computer-based tests.
-Spending $10 million to create Native Language Arts examinations that would allow those learning English to take the tests in Spanish
-An additional $2.9 million for alternative assessments for students deemed to have severe disabilities.
-The creation of a “teacher portal” that would enable educators across the state to receive additional resources in the rollout of Common Core in history and science.
-A proposed five-year spending plan for teacher and principal professional development.

The Cuomo administration official, however, was not impressed.

“SED’s recommendations only offer more of the status quo and are just thinly veiled requests for financial resources by a state agency,” the official said.

Cuomo is throwing Elia and NYSED under the bus on Common Core (and he will throw her and SED under the bus every chance he gets in order to distance himself from the mess he in part created through his education reform agenda - just as he did with John King and SED)

No surprise here - Cuomo's M.O. has been to try and avoid responsibility for the mess he helped create with his APPR teacher evaluation system and his pro-testing, pro-CCSS agenda.

That said, the Cuomo official is right that the SED "package of recommendations" is nothing other than minor tweaks to a broken machine.

A "teacher portal" and five years of extra PD?

An "advisory council" for computer-based tests?

That's the best Gates Foundation genius Elia could do?

Not much to these recommendations, is there?

If this is the best Elia can do, she's going to be out on her Gates Foundation-favored ass sooner rather than later.

Cuomo's already turning on her and using her as a scapegoat for unpopular policies and Elia shows no willingness to actually call for changes to those policies or comprehend how deeply unpopular they are.

Ridiculous NYSED Claim About Common Core Support Will Add To Opt Out Numbers

Yesterday NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia said 71.5% of respondents to the rigged NYSED survey about Common Core support the standards.

Commenters at Perdido Street School responded with scorn:

Parents will provide NYSED all the feedback they need on the April "survey".

And:

When Elia proclaims that everyone loves the CC and it's still full speed ahead with the bullshit, she'll add another 200,000 to the opt outs in April.

And:

Amazing, anyone who has kids knows that number is a complete fabrication. It insults parents, teachers, the public and students. They must have used Common Core math to arrive at that figure.

I think the insulting treatment from Cuomo, Elia and company over education policy will end up backfiring on them too.

Cuomo rigged his CCSS public hearings for minimal attendance by having them in small spaces at times that are so close to school hours that many people can't get to them in time to sign up and speak (see here and here.)

Elia rigged the NYSED Common Core survey to make it as arduous, complex and jargon-laden as possible so that only the most committed would finish it (see here.)

Now she's claiming 71.5% support for CCSS when polling from Siena shows widespread opposition to the standards (see here and here.)

This comes on top of the Endless Testing propaganda site she put together, replete with talking points and sample tweets, for superintendents to use in communicating with parents and teachers about the wonders of the state's testing regime.

The powers that be continue to play games with parents and teachers, on the one hand saying that they're "listening" to the dissatisfaction over Common Core and Endless Testing (see Cuomo's approval numbers on education here and here) while doing all they can to ensure the status quo with the other.

But as the commenters noted, their gambits won't work - when the education policies of Endless Testing and Common Core do not change, parents and teachers will not be fooled by rigged surveys, rigged Common Core hearings, or "sample" pro-Common Core social media messages.

Why Doesn't Cuomo Dispense With The Sham Hearings And Issue His Common Core Report Now?

Pauline Liu in the Times Herald-Record:

If you were able to get to the Common Core Task Force hearing in Albany last Friday, you probably would have gotten an earful about the learning standards.

The panel was created by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who charged it with reviewing Common Core for what he called "a total reboot."

The event in Albany was one of five simultaneous hearings held across the state by members of the task force.

According to media reports, only about 100 people showed up to the Albany hearing. I wished I could have gone, but the so-called "listening sessions" were announced on such short notice.

In fact, the task force came under fire last week from both parents and teachers' associations for its "last-minute" planning.

The public was given only a few days notice about the sessions. They were originally scheduled from 3-5 p.m.

After working parents and the New York State United Teachers union complained that they couldn't get there in time, the hours were switched to 4-6 p.m.

I can't think of a more inconvenient arrangement.

If these hearings are truly important, it's difficult to understand why the task force put them off until what amounts to rush hour at the very end of a work week.

The group appears to be in a rush to hold sessions that it barely has time to schedule.

It's obvious when they hold "total reboot" hearings for education policy during school time so that most parents and teachers can't make it to the meetings that they're not interested in hearing from anybody who doesn't already agree with Cuomo.

And given the previous commissions and panels Cuomo has convened, from the Moreland Commissions on Public Corruption and Utility Storm Preparation and Response (both of which he controlled through the executive director doe both, Regina Calcaterra) to other education commissions in the past like the one that Todd Hathaway was on where they didn't want to hear about his dissent and signed his name to the final report even though he didn't agree with the findings, we know Cuomo has total control of the scripts of these dog and pony shows.

So why not just save everybody some time, energy and money and release the report now instead of going through the sham of making it look like you're listening to parent and educator concerns, Governor?

You're fooling very few with your dog and pony shows on Common Core.

We've seen these shows before and we know when they rigged for outcomes.

To be frank, if they're your show, they're always rigged.

Cuomo Administration Hack Defends His Boss Over Common Core, Education Policy

Remember Jim Malatras, the Cuomo administration hack/director of state operations who "wrote" to Merryl Tisch about education policy right before Governor Cuomo unveiled education reforms for the state budget that included a school receivership program and increasing the weight of test scores in teacher evaluations to 50%?

Well, he's back with another piece of writing, this in the Times Union, defending Boss Cuomo over those very education policies, which are very unpopular (as is his boss.)

In his commentary, Malatras claims Cuomo has "led the nation" in limiting testing time in schools (a bogus claim since Cuomo has increased the weight of test scores on teacher ratings which means the official "testing time" does not include the Endless Test Prep kids undergo all the year through so that their schools are not closed and their teachers aren't fired based upon their state test scores) and has provided the highest funding for schools in state history (another bogus claim which ignores all the new state mandates Cuomo and NYSED have thrown onto school districts that eats up gobs of that money as well as the property cap that limits the ability of districts to increase funding.)

In addition, Malatras takes a victory lap that the feds have followed suit with the 2% limit on testing, writing that "rather than following the lead of the U.S. Department of Education, New York has led the way for other states and was highlighted in a recent federal announcement as a model for other states looking to move this work forward."

This ignores that the 2% rule was instituted at the federal level by the same guy who pushed it here (former NYSED Commissioner, now acting-Secretary of Education John King) and that, in the end, it's meaningless because it still means kids will spend at least 22 hours a year on standardized testing.
If you add in all the Endless Test Prep that must be done during the Endless Testing regime to the 2% testing time so that teachers don't get fired or schools don't get closed, you can see how the rule changes little.

That Cuomo has taken to having his hack Malatras write rebuttals to op-ed pieces in the Times Union tells you how defensive Cuomo is over his education polices.

Given that he's engaging in another dog and pony show with his Common Core Review task force (which appears to want to hear as little as possible from anybody who doesn't already agree with the governor) and is trying to make it look like he's making changes to the Common Core/Endless Testing regime in New York State without actually making any changes, he should be on the defensive.

His defensive actions are fruitless - parents and teachers are fed up with his reform agenda, are fed up with him and are not going to be fooled by any dog and pony show that makes minor tweaks to the state's education policies but essentially leaves the damaging Common Core/Endless Testing regime in place.

Merryl Tisch Still Loves Common Core And Endless Testing

The Doyenne of Testing may be on the way out, but that hasn't stopped her from weighing on on how swell her education reform agenda is:

The state’s outgoing education policy chief on Wednesday implored Gov. Andrew Cuomo to preserve the state’s new tougher learning standards and exams, despite mounting opposition from parents and teachers unions.

...

Tisch said during a public radio interview Wednesday that Cuomo “believes in high standards, he believes in testing,” but he is also “hearing a lot of noise in the background” from Common Core critics. Calling the governor a “very important ally in the reform effort,” she urged him not to let the backlash steer him away from the standards.

“I understand that people are putting enormous pressure to roll back, to stand still, to do a moratorium,” she said on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show. However, she added, “I would just hope that when they push back, that no one panics.”

Tisch need not worry about Cuomo changing anything - his CCSS task force is doing all they can to limit attendance at their public hearings so as to not hear much of anything from critics of the reform policies the state pursues.

Just another sign that all we're getting at the state level is a "rebranding" of Common Core and the Endless Testing regime.

State pols and educrats have no intention of changing direction in policy.

Common Core (though perhaps by another name and with minor tweaks) and the Endless Testing regime will live on until politicians are made to pay  apolitical price for their support.

That means voting a few of these crooks out of office BECAUSE of their support for Common Core, the Endless testing regime and the corporate education reform agenda.

Expect No Meaningful Change Out Of Cuomo's Sham Common Core Task Force

The ever perceptive Fred LeBrun in the Times Union:

The governor says he wants a complete reboot of Common Core, and wants to hear what all the stakeholders have to say through his diverse commission. Then he wants to lay out a new plan in January when the Legislature comes to town. Effectively that means the commission — which incidentally has no member from the "Opt Out" movement representing 20 percent of the state's students and their parents — must grapple with a complicated set of issues with diverse viewpoints and come up over the next several weeks with a consensus that satisfies all sides. An impossible task.

So we will most likely get what we got before, a bad joke masquerading as a thoughtful policy change.

Todd Hathaway, a teacher at East Aurora High School, was a member of the governor's first Common Core panel, and saw with horror how Albany really works. He was a dissenter from the commission's report advocating the garbage we got and found out they didn't really care what he thought. The governor's office, he said, "repeatedly ignored my concerns ... about inappropriate state testing, the misuse of invalid tests for (teacher) evaluations and the lack of transparency in state testing."

...

Our transactional governor, who long ago listened appreciatively to his hedge fund friends on promoting charter schools, for-profit education, devaluing teachers and advocating Common Core and high-stakes testing, is mostly looking for a political solution here, not an educational one. He wants to find a way to appease an angry, rebellious public while changing as little as he can of the atrocious education policy he dictated to the Legislature earlier this year.

...

The governor has made the Regents and the State Education Department scapegoats for his failed policies, blaming them for the hurried rollout of still unformed Common Core in this state. Lest we forget, it was the governor who insisted on getting there first among states, ready or not. Nor can we forget his continued vilification of teachers for a very long time.

Blaming teachers has been nothing but a prolonged, unfair distraction from what remains a prime challenge in New York public education — closing the achievement gap for minorities, for poorer school districts in inner cities and deep rural areas.

The disparity in graduation rates hasn't budged. It's time we got back to that, with a much better plan.

The difference between this "review" Cuomo has put together and the two past education panels/commissions is that we've got a road map on how this all works - Cuomo's office writes the report and hands it off for the members to sign and/or indicates how the report should be written to their shills on the commission.

This is what happened with the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption, this is what happened with the LIPA commission after Sandy, this is what happened with the two previous education commissions/panels.

So few will be fooled by this sham task force or the report it hands off to Cuomo for his January State of the State speech because we've seen this show before.

The key will be to point out to people over and over how much of a sham the Cuomo review was and to make him pay a political price for putting on the dog and pony show.

He wants a political solution to an education problem to come out of this process.

What he's going to get is an even bigger political problem when parents and educators see that the "reboot" was nothing other than a "rename" of the same education reform agenda and policies.

Cuomo's Common Core Panel Rigged With Pro-Common Core Supporters

From the Buffalo News:

A task force created by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to review the state’s controversial Common Core standards will include a Buffalo parent advocate who was an early supporter of the learning benchmarks.

Samuel Radford III is one of 15 people who will serve on the new panel, Cuomo announced Monday. The committee includes a wide range of community and school leaders from across the state, including Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia, two teachers, state lawmakers, school administrators and top union leaders.

Radford said he sees an opportunity for the state to fix flaws in the way the learning standards were rolled out in schools during the last five years.

“Any time you do dramatic change like that, the process is very important,” said Radford, president of the District Parent Coordinating Council of Buffalo. “The process in this case turned out to be not something that was effective.”

Cuomo claimed in a video yesterday that the task of the review was for a "total reboot" of the system.

But when you rig the task force with pro-Common Core supporters you don't get a "total reboot" - you get the same old same old.

This task force has a parent who was an early supporter of the Common Core on it, a union leader who still supports Common Core, a state VP of a state teachers unions that also supports Common Core, the former head of a charter school network who loves Common Core, an education department commissioner who has said we cannot go "backward" on Common Core, a bankster who thinks the Common Core is great...

What kind of "total reboot" comes from this kind of task force predisposed to say "Common Core is swell - it's the 'implementation' that went off course!"?

The truth is, there will be no serious changes to the Endless Testing regime or the Common Core from this task force because Cuomo doesn't really want any.

Cuomo wants the Endless Testing regime to remain in place and be used to fire teachers, close schools and hand them off to charter operators.

The fight that is going on over Common Core and testing is, in part, a fight over that part of the governor's agenda - and that isn't going to be addressed by the task force:

One critic said the governor's program would do little to slow the "opt out" movement unless the Democrat de-emphasized the use of student test scores to evaluate schools and teachers.

"This task force is supposed to be his answer to a political problem," said Billy Easton of the Alliance for Quality Education, which has criticized the governor's education policies. "As long as tests are linked to closing schools and teachers losing jobs, you're going to see the same backlash from parents."

 And:

The task force, however, is not directly charged with reviewing the use of state standardized tests in teacher evaluations – one of the most controversial aspects of a package of education reforms the state has pushed through in recent years. Cuomo and the state Legislature earlier this year approved an overhaul to the teacher evaluation system that did little to satisfy its critics.

Some parents remain skeptical that Cuomo’s new task force will address concerns raised by thousands of parents who directed their children not to take state standardized tests aligned with the Common Core last spring. More than 200,000 elementary and middle school students across the state refused to take the math and English tests.

“For the governor to really fix it, he’s got to detach the teacher evaluations from testing,” said Eric Mihelbergel, a Tonawanda parent who helped found Western New Yorkers for Public Education, which has helped organize the testing boycott. “And I really don’t think he’s willing to do that.”

He clearly is not since he didn't make it part of the task force mandate and has, in the past, said teacher evaluations tied to test scores are the centerpiece of his education reform plan.

In addition, the "parent input" he sought comes from a parent already in agreement with him on the swellness of Common Core.

So what we have here is a third dog and pony show from Cuomo on education, following fairly closely on the last two, with an outcome pretty much rigged already by the choices of the task force members and the mandate they were given for their review - just like previous Cuomo education commissions (see here and here.)

Which means the political problems Andy has over Common Core, testing and his teacher evaluation system isn't going to go away despite his efforts to claim a "total reboot."

Cuomo Says He Hears Parent Concerns Over Common Core, But Chooses Rubber Stamp Commission For Review Process

From the "Sure you've heard parent complaints" file:

Cuomo’s office released a video featuring the governor, who acknowledged changes are needed to the standards.

“I have heard the message clearly,” Cuomo said in the video. “We must taken action and we must take action now to fix our schools.”

And what action is he taking?

Why, putting the same guy in charge of the last rubber stamp education commission in charge of this rubber stamp commission:

Former Time Warner and Citigroup CEO Dick Parsons will lead Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s latest effort to overhaul the controversial Common Core education standards in New York, his office on Monday announced. 

The panel will be charged with reviewing the standards and making a package of recommendations aimed at overhauling the standards. 

The panel was formed as the Department of Education forms its own committee to review the standards. 

The Parsons-led commission — which also includes Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia — is expected to have its recommendations ready by January, time for the governor to deliver his State of the State address.

Elia has already told us that she too hears parent concerns but we cannot go backward on the standards (i.e., "I really didn't hear you but am only making believe like I did...")

Now we've got Cuomo saying the same soothing words about hearing parent concerns but showing through his actions that he really didn't hear them at all.

The commission is supposed to report back to the governor before his January State of the State speech.

Frankly, they could just issue the report now because the whole process is rigged - just like the last time around. 

If Cuomo and Elia think they're fooling anybody with this dog and pony show, I've got a Tappan Zee Bridge construction project to sell them.