Cuomo And Brown

Governor Jerry Brown:

The laws that are in fashion demand tightly constrained curricula and reams of accountability data. All the better if it requires quiz-bits of information, regurgitated at regular intervals and stored in vast computers. Performance metrics, of course, are invoked like talismans. Distant authorities crack the whip, demanding quantitative measures and a stark, single number to encapsulate the precise achievement level of every child.

We seem to think that education is a thing—like a vaccine—that can be designed from afar and simply injected into our children. But as the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats said, “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”

This year, as you consider new education laws, I ask you to consider the principle of Subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is the idea that a central authority should only perform those tasks which cannot be performed at a more immediate or local level. In other words, higher or more remote levels of government, like the state, should render assistance to local school districts, but always respect their primary jurisdiction and the dignity and freedom of teachers and students.

Subsidiarity is offended when distant authorities prescribe in minute detail what is taught, how it is taught and how it is to be measured. I would prefer to trust our teachers who are in the classroom each day, doing the real work – lighting fires in young minds.

My 2013 Budget Summary lays out the case for cutting categorical programs and putting maximum authority and discretion back at the local level—with school boards. I am asking you to approve a brand new Local Control Funding Formula which would distribute supplemental funds — over an extended period of time — to school districts based on the real world problems they face. This formula recognizes the fact that a child in a family making $20,000 a year or speaking a language different from English or living in a foster home requires more help. Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice.

Governor Andrew Cuomo:

Cuomo’s education spending proposals rely heavily on competitive grants, which essentially pit school districts against each other and have the power to leverage more change for fewer dollars. The governor did not offer school districts any significant mandate relief and the modest grants to increase learning time and early education will only cover a handful of districts.

The governor again criticized the amount of money spent by New York’s schools, which have the highest per-pupil costs in the nation, at $18,618, 76 percent above the national average. The proposal points out that 74 percent of New York students graduate high school and just 35 percent are considered college-and-career ready.

Cuomo said he does not want to dump money into education just to support “trade groups, a veiled swipe at New York United Teachers. He said students and parents should have their interests before the adults that work in public education.

“Pay for results, pay for performance,” he said. “Put the customer first, this is not about funding bureaucracy.”

Cuomo’s spending plan calls for a $25 million expansion of pre-kindergarten, targeting high-needs districts where poorer children are more in need of early learning. The plan calls for $20 million to extend early learning, and will pay the full cost for districts that extend the school day or school year by at least 25 percent.

A “bar exam” for teachers that must be passed to earn certification. The budget also include $11 million to reward high-performing “master” teachers who could receive $15,000 in stipends, annually for four years, to mentor colleagues who need help.

Jerry Brown uses Yeats to describe how teachers can inspire young minds.

Andrew Cuomo compares students to customers and teachers to trade groups.

Oh, but he did set aside $60 million for the Buffalo Bills.

If he's only going to pay for results, pay for performance, then what the hell are the Bills getting $60 million for?

I mean, I've got nothing against the Bills, but weren't they 6-10 this year?

You can't make this stuff up.

You just can't.

There are few men in public life today with as small a mind and as small a universal view as Andrew Cuomo has.

Of course his oversized ego compensates for the small mind and small universal view.

With all due respect to NYC Educator, Andrew Cuomo is the worst person in the world today, not John King.

Sure King sucks Big Data, but he's only getting away with this because Cuomo wants the policies this way.

On the other hand, Jerry Brown, with his respect for teachers and education as something other than an exercise in data collation, is a mensch.

Governor 1% Says He's Looking Out For Students

Unlike those greedy, lazy, nasty unaccountable teachers, of course:

Students have a new representative in Albany: Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Right now, Cuomo is delivering his second State of the State address today, titled “Building a New New York … with you.”

Education issues account for one and a half of the speech’s 33 pages of prepared remarks. As expected, the governor is calling for an education commission to propose reforms to the state’s education system. That commission will look for ways to boost “teacher accountability and student achievement” and “management efficiency” — both topics Cuomo targeted during his first address a year ago — and will work with the legislature.

He’s also appointing himself chief lobbyist for students, calling them the only group in schools that don’t employ lobbyists of their own.

“This year, I will take a second job — consider me the lobbyist for the students,” he says in the prepared remarks, which he has been known to depart from. “I will wage a campaign to put students first, and to remind us that the purpose of public education is to help children grow, not to grow the public education bureaucracy.”

If Cuomo REALLY wants a commission that will look out for students interests, he'd put students on the panel, parents on the panel, education experts who have not been bought off by Pearson and News Corp. and McGraw-Hill and Microsoft/Gates.

If Cuomo REALLY wanted to look out for the interests of children, he'd ask them if they want to take both city and state tests in every subject four times a year (a total of 20 standardized tests) so that their teachers and schools can be evaluated using these scores and Cuomo's corporate buddies can rake in the dough.

If Cuomo REALLY cared about kids, he'd make sure there was enough funding for all children in NY State to eat healthy food, live in a neighborhood safe from crime, go to schools with adequate funding that could be used IN the classroom as opposed to hiring consultants and developing data systems.

But Cuomo is NOT interested in that.

He is interested in helping out his corporate buddies finish off the Shock and Awe they've been doing on the public education system for the last ten years since NCLB.

He is interested in making money for his best buddy, Rupert Murdoch.

He is interested in adding tests to every subject at every grade level a couple of times a year so he can make money for his buddies at Pearson and he is looking to track that data so he can make money for his buddies at News Corp. using systems owned by Rupert Murdoch and he is interested in closing schools that are supposedly "failing" so that his charter school pals can reopen them as privatized charters and he is interested in firing teachers using test scores and value-added assessments to ease the Brave New Education System - one where students are educated in privatized schools by a teacher in a remote place over computer - into being.

That is what he is interested in.

Silver In The Clouds For Cuomo

Little Andy and his Republican allies are all excited about the tax cuts for rich people and pay cuts for government workers the governor has proposed. But Assembly Leader Shelly Silver may be a problem for them:

ALBANY -- Even as he publicly vows support for Gov. Cuomo's agenda to fix the state, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver refused yesterday to endorse three of the newly elected governor's key proposals, including ending the state's surtax on the rich.

The powerful speaker repeatedly ducked questions about whether he backed Cuomo's call to let expire an income-tax surcharge on New Yorkers making more than $200,000 annually, saying he first must see the new governor's budget proposal and confer with his Democratic Conference.

The $4 billion-a-year tax is set to expire Dec. 31, three months before the end of the fiscal year. Facing an estimated $10 billion budget gap, the state would have to cut $1 billion in spending to cover the loss.

"Collectively, we will get together and look at that budget," Silver (D-Manhattan) told Albany's WGDJ radio. "We'll make a determination whether those cuts should go into effect or whether that tax should continue."

The sphinx-like speaker stood in stark contrast to newly elected Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-LI), who said he "absolutely" supports letting the tax expire.

"The worst thing we could do is more taxes or send the message that we're going to continue to tax our way out of economic problems," Skelos said.

Silver can't unilaterally prevent the tax from expiring, but Cuomo insiders fear he might hold up an overall budget agreement unless Cuomo keeps the tax and uses it to restore cut spending. The three-year surcharge was first approved by Gov. David Paterson in 2009 at Silver's urging.

"We want everyone to contribute to getting the state out of its budget mess," Assemblyman Rory Lancman (D-Queens), a Silver ally, told Fox Business News yesterday.

The state's top income-tax rate -- that paid by taxpayers earning more than $500,000 -- would fall from 8.97 percent to 6.85 percent if the surcharge expires.

Silver's silence came a day after Cuomo delivered a rousing State of the State Address in which he called on lawmakers to end the state's status as the "tax capital of the nation."

Cuomo said fiscal discipline, as well as capping local property-tax hikes at 2 percent and overhauling the state's ethics laws, was essential to restoring confidence and improving the business climate.

I hope Shelly and the Assembly Dems stick to their guns on this.

Cuomo keeps saying he is in favor of "shared sacrifice," but as far as I can see from his plans (and the Republican approval for them), he seems to think that means he sacrifices middle and working class people so that his hedge fund/education reform/Wall Street criminal friends can rake in even more money than they already have.

Cuomo - Another Free Market Fetishist Bringing "Competition" To A Collaborative Enterprise

Oh, boy, another free market fetishist who plans to bring those wonderful business ethics that brought us the tech bubble of the early 2000's the real estate bubble of the middle 2000's and the credit crisis/financial crisis of the late 2000's to public education:

In his first State of the State speech today, Cuomo proposed creating two new competitive grant funds for state school districts, worth $250 million each.

The first grant would reward districts that boost students’ academic performance. The second would go to districts that find ways to cut costs that don’t affect the classroom.

It’s not yet clear if the addition of the grant competitions would alter the state’s current formula-based education model. But the governor was critical of the model, which he said gives districts no incentives to improve.

“Competition works,” Cuomo said, pointing to the state legislature’s passage of a charter cap lift bill as part of its (eventually successful) bid to win Race to the Top funds.

Cuomo’s plan would follow the lead of the federal government, which the governor said has “actually been more innovative in this area.”

Actually schools work best when there is collaboration between government, staff, parents and students to bring the best possible education to children.

Why so many American political leaders seem to be so enamored of Reaganesque slogans about the wonders of free markets, performance-based pay and competition after unfettered free markets, pay based upon bonuses and ill-regulated competition that encourages monopolies brought us three bubbles and two financial crises in the last ten years is beyond me.

I can only assume that the politicians who hawk this crap are themselves as corrupt as the "competition" they hawk as the solution to everything in society.