Micromanaging Our Way To The Top

Kate Taylor in the NY Times on the principals union hammering de Blasio for micromanaging renewal schools:

Mr. Logan says he — and by extension, the 6,000 members of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators — has lost confidence in the de Blasio administration. In a column to be published in the union’s newsletter this month, Mr. Logan writes of the Education Department, “Sadly, in the timeworn tradition of the D.O.E., there are so many cooks running around in the kitchen, the chefs don’t know what kind of dish they’re concocting.” So many different mandates have been thrown at these schools, he writes, that “all we have is a recipe for disaster.”

...

In an interview last week, Mr. Logan said of the school-turnaround effort, “This became a political mess, because the mayor made this his political thing.”

He added, “They’ve lost their focus on kids.”

Mr. Logan said principals in the 94 schools were being overwhelmed with paperwork and meetings and micromanaged to the point that they could not do what they thought was best for their schools. He said he believed the mayor’s approach was destined to fail if the city did not change its strategy.

Hey, it's not just at renewal schools and it's not just de Blasio doing the micromanaging.

Cuomo's doing it with the 2015 education reform law.

SED is doing it with APPR.

The NYCDOE is doing it with Danielson.

Everything is micromanaged these days, everything overly controlled.

The more things "change" in education, the less they actually change.

Whether it's Bloomberg, de Blasio, Bush, Obama, Clinton, Paterson, or Cuomo - it's the same educrats running stuff.

The control freaks are in control.

Cuomo Meddles With Subpoenas Again

Cuomo the control freak:

The acting head of New York’s top banking regulator and the agency’s chief spokesman are resigning from the office amid the agency’s battle with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration over the regulator’s independence, according to people familiar with the matter.

Anthony Albanese, the acting superintendent of the Department of Financial Services, and spokesman Matthew Anderson informed the governor’s office in recent weeks that they would resign, these people said.

There have been growing tensions between DFS and the office of Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, since Mr. Albanese’s predecessor, Benjamin Lawsky, left the agency in June to start his own legal and consulting firm, the people said.

Mr. Cuomo’s staff has sought in recent months to exert more control over the regulator, which has established itself as a powerful financial watchdog and brought billions of dollars in penalties to New York state’s general fund. The regulator was also unpopular on Wall Street, where some executives felt the department at times overreached on Mr. Lawsky’s watch.

...

Since Mr. Lawsky’s departure, Mr. Cuomo’s assistant secretary for financial services, Brendan Fitzgerald, has instructed the department that any subpoenas it intends to issue must first be approved by himself or by the governor’s office, these people said.

That practice wasn’t standard during Mr. Lawsky’s tenure, according to these people, and it provoked a backlash among department officials who felt the governor’s office was exerting too much control over the agency’s investigations. In recent months, Mr. Albanese resisted the order from the governor’s office, these people said.

Cuomo claims his Buffalo Billion Project contracts that are under scrutiny by the US attorney were handled without his office taking part in the decisions.

Yet he meddles in everything else he can - including forcing DFS to have subpoenas approved by his office first.

Sure the Buffalo Billion contracts were handled without your office approval, Andy.

Sure.

Cuomo's Book-Signing Emblematic Of Cuomo's Tenure As Governor

From the NY Times:

There were no lines snaking down the sidewalk, and no scramble to claim a copy of the 517-page tome. The most enthusiastic attendees seemed to be the protesters outside, who urged a ban on hydraulic fracturing.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo made his public debut as a published memoirist on Wednesday night, signing copies of his book at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square.

Befitting his political stature, the event was heavily guarded and stage-managed, but it attracted only a modest crowd of would-be readers.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, he was not.

...

On Wednesday night, the book was ranked No. 2,076 on Amazon.com’s best-seller list. People unhappy with Mr. Cuomo flooded the reviews on the site; of the 162 reviews by Wednesday night, 158 gave it one out of five stars.

Stage-managing the appearance, keeping the press controlled and out-of-earshot, few enthusiastic supporters, mostly enthusiastic critics.

That crystallizes Cuomo's tenure as governor perfectly.

Cuomo's Control-Freak Style Comes Back To Bite Him

It's a banner day in the newspapers for Cuomo-bashing. Here's another Cuomo-bashing piece, this one from Ken Lovett in the Daily News:

ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo's latest woes over his handling of an anti-corruption commission can be traced back to his need for control, insiders say.

Cuomo is privately being called out by some of those he appointed to the Moreland Commission — which he initially promised would be independent — for interfering with their work.
"This was always a risk," said one source. "He has a tendency to try and get involved in everything. He can't help himself."

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has taken control of the short-lived commission's files and vows to follow any unresolved leads. Bharara last week did not rule out probing Cuomo's handling of the commission, criticizing the governor for shutting it down after only nine months in exchange for approval of an ethics package by the Legislature.

...

Former Public Advocate Mark Green, who Cuomo appointed to serve on a commission to probe utilities in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, wrote of similar interference by Cuomo staffers in a Daily News op-ed published Sunday.

Green said Cuomo aides seemed to be pushing the Sandy panel for a pre-ordained result and only stopped when he threatened to quit.

"This has always been Andrew's mini Achilles heel: politics and investigations," said a frequent Cuomo ally. "Either you're a purist or you're not."

Of course he did the same with the Common Core panel - he had his people give the commission what he wanted, then expected all to sign off on it unanimously.

Teacher Todd Hathaway did not do that, going public with the governor's heavy-handed style.

This control freak stuff works for a long time, until it stops working because it gins up to much resentment.

Hard to know if Cuomo has hit that wall yet, but given the multitude of negative Cuomo pieces in the media today and yesterday (most of which I covered here at Perdido Street School), it sure looks like he has.

Danielson'd

Those of you who have already had an observation under the new Danielson rubric, I am interested in your experiences.

Was this a formal or informal observation?

Did you use a suggested lesson plan format?

What was the pre-observation conference like?

What was the lesson observation like?

Did you allow it to be filmed?

What feedback did you get from the principal or assistant principal?

How were you rated on the different domains?

Did you feel anything was unfair?

Did you feel the process was overall fair or unfair?

Did you feel the ratings were justified or not?

Did you protest anything you were told or any rating you were given?

And anything else you might want to pass along.

I'm working on a future post about the essential unworkability of the Danielson rubric, one which will take aim at the education reformers for pushing this thing, but will also aim at the UFT, AFT and NEA for promoting it as well.

And we may have a thing or two to say about Ms. Charlotte herself.

My email is: realitybasededucator@aol.com.

Cuomo Aides Ghostwrote Praise Of Cuomo For Independent Groups' P.R. Releases

Nobody spends more time thinking about his public image than Andrew Cuomo:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration likes to hear compliments so much that it will write them for you.

The Democratic administration ghostwrote statements for two business groups that praised the state budget in a mid-April news release from the governor’s office, according to e-mails obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information request. The correspondence provides an unusual look at how elected officials try to burnish their images.

The statements were written by Andrew Zambelli, a top aide to the governor, who e-mailed them to two business advocacy groups, the Business Council of New York State and Unshackle Upstate. In the e-mails to both groups, Mr. Zambelli wrote, “We have written a suggested quote,” and he then asked the top official of each group to review the quote and “edit as you see fit.”

Mr. Zambelli also made it clear he needed a quick answer, telling Brian Sampson, the executive director of Unshackle Upstate, that “this is kind of a rush.”

No changes were made. Both statements appeared verbatim in the news release, under the names of Heather Briccetti, the president and chief executive of the Business Council, and Mr. Sampson.

One of the groups said having public officials ghost write their p.r. releases for them was not something they usually do.

The other group said it's something they almost never do.

But when it comes to Little Andy Cuomo and his public relations, the Cuomo administration leaves no stone unturned and no press release to chance.