Time For An Education Summit That Doesn't Emanate From The Governor's Office

Ken Mitchell, former superintendent of the South Orangetown school district and current associate professor of education at Manhattanville College:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called for another overhaul of the state's flawed teacher evaluation system. The current model was rushed into place so New York could qualify for federal Race To The Top dollars, and has failed to gather accurate information about teacher quality. If Albany's efforts to wrest control from local districts to advance a politically motivated education agenda are successful, the results will be damaging to students and fiscally wasteful, while offering no credible information about teacher performance. It is time for an education summit, but not one that emanates from the governor's office.

The governor has appointed commissions on mandate relief, school reform, and Common Core, naming members who often lacked expertise or objectivity. This time we need a summit involving stakeholders: teachers, principals, superintendents, parents and school boards. We need a de-politicized venue to ensure an objective analysis of the evidence behind current and proposed reforms related to assessment, teacher evaluation, Common Core and charter schools. If policymakers continue to mandate without evidence and allow profiteers to influence educational decisions, children will be harmed and public education ruined.

Read the whole piece - Mitchell asks the right questions about Cuomo's agenda, including:

What is the evidence for using student test results to rate teachers?

Only 20% of teachers teach subjects with yearly state tests - will the state need to develop more tests for all disciplines and grade levels? If so, what would be the cost?

While the public is told that charters are the "solution" to failing schools, what is the evidence? Have charters helped children with significant learning challenges succeed? Why should the public subsidize privatization?

What is the evidence to support that state or private takeovers succeed? What did New York learn from taking over the the Roosevelt School District on Long Island? What did Louisiana learn from the New Orleans charter school takeover?

What was the empirical basis for the Common Core and associated tests? Do they consider the cognitive development of children?

Mitchell concludes:

It is time for a summit. New York would serve as a model to the nation by developing an objective, comprehensive, research-rich analysis of its school reform agenda to ensure that we are helping, not harming, the children in our schools.

 That sounds right to me.

Cuomo Breaks Working Families Party Promises

Gee, here's a surprise:

It has been more than four months since the fragile marriage between the governor and the Working Families Party was consummated: The group endorsed Mr. Cuomo, over many of its members’ objections, after he agreed to pursue a long list of liberal goals, as part of a deal that Mr. de Blasio helped broker.

The top priority was an effort to tilt the balance of power in the State Senate, where Republicans currently share leadership with a group of breakaway Democrats.

Less than a month before Election Day, with polls showing some key Senate races leaning in Republicans’ favor, the arrangement with the governor appears increasingly fraught. Despite his pledge to push for Democratic control of the Senate, Mr. Cuomo has at times seemed not to have a strong opinion about the outcome of the November elections.

“You can’t say, ‘Well, I can work well if they elect this party,’ ” he told reporters last month. “They elect a legislature: Democratic, Republican, whatever they elect. I think the job of the governor is to figure out how to make it work.”

Some of the governor’s grudging supporters say he has already faltered on his promise: Mr. Cuomo has not ruled out endorsing a Republican incumbent from Buffalo, Mark J. Grisanti, calling the decision “personally difficult.” Mr. Grisanti, who lost the Republican primary to a right-leaning challenger but is staying in the race as the candidate of the Independence Party, backed the governor’s push to legalize same-sex marriage.

... 

Democrats hoped that with the support of Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Cuomo, they would be able to win enough seats this year to take control of the Senate. But those efforts are not going so well. A promising candidate running on Long Island ended his candidacy in September after his former law firm accused him of fraud, and a series of polls conducted last week offered a bleak outlook in several other contests.

The polls, by Siena College, found three incumbent Democrats trailing Republican challengers by double-digit margins. And in two Republican-controlled districts on Long Island that Democrats had hoped to capture, the polls showed the Republican candidates holding wide leads.

City officials have framed the fate of the State Senate as crucial to their agenda. A shift in the balance of power, they say, could help advance legislation related to the minimum wage, campaign-finance reform and immigration, among other issues.

Cuomo doesn't want any of those things - an increase in the minimum wage, campaign-finance reform, immigration reform - so he doesn't really want a Democratic State Senate.

What he wants is for things to remain the same, with Republicans in control, an Independent Democratic Caucus backing Republicans and the rightward lean of the State Senate remaining as it is.

His book, out soon, says it all:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo , whose center-right policies have alienated him from much of his party’s progressive base, attacks the “extreme left of the Democratic Party” in his new memoir, according to a report in the New York Times.

While his father Mario Cuomo’s 1984 address at the Democratic National Convention served as a liberal rallying cry, Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly found himself starkly at odds with the liberal wing of the party. Although the governor signed marriage equality and gun safety legislation into law and has staked out a robustly pro-choice position, he has also slashed corporate taxes, capped property taxes, maneuvered to keep his own party from controlling the New York State Senate, lent conditional support to fracking, and earned plaudits from the right-wing National Review for his conservative economic agenda. There’s also the federal probe into Cuomo’s disbanding of his much-heralded anti-corruption commission, which Cuomo had touted as evidence of his commitment to good government.

...

 Given his center-right track record, it’s hardly unsurprising that Cuomo is no fonder of the left than the left is of him. According to the Times – which got its hands on a copy of his new memoir, All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success in Politics and Life – Cuomo rips the “extreme left” in the book, particularly for what he depicts as its hostility to the rich. Leftists, Cuomo writes, “speak of punitively raising taxes on the rich and transferring the money to the poor” and seek to “demonize those who are very wealthy.”

Few things aid Cuomo's helping of the 1% than ensuring the State Senate continues to run as it has.

And so, Cuomo's promises to WFP were worthless.

Again I say, gee, what a surprise.

Corporate Education Reform Proponent George Miller To Retire From Congress

The corporate education reform movement and for-profit post secondary school industry lost a reliable shill:

California Rep. George Miller, Nancy Pelosi’s strong right arm and one of the top Democratic legislators of his generation, is stepping down at the end of this year after four decades in Congress. 

Miller informed Pelosi, the Democratic leader, of his decision last Wednesday and began telling personal staff Monday morning in advance of a public announcement in his Bay Area home district.

Miller was a huge supporter of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, a big proponent for high stakes testing and teacher evaluations tied to high stakes tests and a vacuum cleaner when it came to sucking up huge amounts of campaign funds from the for-profit schooling industry.

I'm sure Miller will slink off to become a lobbyist in the education reform world somewhere, either for the charter sector or the for profit college sector.

One way or another, Miller will cash in.

The good news is, at least he's out of Congress.

A Warning Sign On Weiner

From Politicker:

When campaigns schedule voter meet-and-greets outside of subway stops, they typically entail candidates standing on sidewalks with handfuls of flyers, trying desperately to shake hands with frenzied commuters–often disinterested in being pestered on their way to or from work. But this wasn’t the usual candidate.

This was former Congressman Anthony Weiner, who held court this evening on the Upper West Side. For well over an hour, Mr. Weiner stood surrounded by a crowd of attentive voters, spectators and reporters, fielding one question after the next after the next.

“If I had a soap box I’d climb up on it,” mused Mr. Weiner early on in the conversation, which was reminiscent of the atmosphere at the famed Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park.

Aside from an early heckler, the reception was overwhelmingly positive, with various locals stopping to pose for photos, listen in and wish Mr. Weiner well. Others peppered him with questions on a host of topics, including education, bike lanes, the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk tactic, affordable housing and hospital closings.

If the other campaigns don't put him on the defensive soon, there will be more than just one poll showing him in the lead in the mayoral race.

The last couple of days some unions have been talking about attacking Weiner on two fronts: his ethics and his corporate-friendly retrogressive politics.

They need to be getting that message out there on the air waves soon.

I've gone from an Anybody But Quinn supporter to an Anybody But Weiner supporter.

Not that I want Quinn as mayor, but even she would not be as damaging to the city, to schools, to students, and to teachers as Anthony Weiner.

Somebody needs to expose this narcissistic corporate sell-out for what he is.

Al D'Amato And Bill Thompson

Al D'amato is one of the more odious public figures in New York.

That he is supporting Bill Thompson for mayor and raising substantial cash for the Thompson campaign are two very good reasons not to vote for Bill Thompson for mayor:

Alfonse M. D’Amato, it turns out, is the biggest financial backer for one Democrat in the New York City mayoral race, raising money enthusiastically for William C. Thompson Jr., whose best-known boosters, including David N. Dinkins and Betsy Gotbaum, lean decidedly to the left.

As the man long known as Senator Pothole might put it: What gives? 

The unlikely alliance has given Mr. Thompson, an even-tempered former city comptroller, a sorely needed jolt of high-powered fund-raising as he seeks to project energy and momentum in the wide-open race for the Democratic nomination. 

It also underscores the diversity of supporters in the political establishment that he has tried to demonstrate with endorsements from Merryl H. Tisch, chancellor of the State Board of Regents, and Richard Ravitch, a former lieutenant governor and Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman.

Mr. D’Amato and his partner Melvin H. Miller, a onetime speaker of the State Assembly, bundled some $65,000 in donations to Mr. Thompson through March 11. And Mr. D’Amato’s close associates, former aides and major clients have pitched in, too. All told, his network has accounted for as much as $125,000 in gifts to the Thompson campaign. 

...

 Mr. D’Amato called Mr. Thompson a decent, steady hand who understands education, economics, budgets and Wall Street, and said he found Mr. Thompson to be the least offensive Democrat, particularly from the perspective of his clients. 

“Some of them are antigrowth, antidevelopment, just plain wrong,” Mr. D’Amato said of the other mayoral contenders. He said that Mr. Thompson, by contrast, was someone “who doesn’t frighten business.” 

“They don’t have fear of Bill Thompson, that he’s going to do some radical proposal that’s going to hurt their business,” Mr. D’Amato said. “He’s not as give-away-everything-there-is.” 

When oligarchs like Merryl Tisch and their functionaries like Al D'amato like Bill Thompson for mayor, there is a problem with Bill Thompson for mayor.

NYSUT On The Take From Gates Foundation

Via Diane Ravitch, we learn that the NYSUT has taken half a million dollars from the Gates Foundation "to support a consortium of districts in New York and Rhode Island to work with labor-management teams to design and pilot more differentiated teacher development and evaluation systems."

The next time your hear Dick Iannuzzi or some NYSUT spokesperson talk about how they're trying to protect teachers from the unfair implementation of the Common Core or APPR or some other ravage of education reform, remember the education reform foundations they take money from.

Remember who's paying them.

Same goes for Randi Weingarten and the AFT.

The fix is in.

Weiner Became A Corporate Consultant

I've been saying that Anthony Weiner needs to stop looking for a new government gig, but it turns out he has the kind of job nearly every ex-pol gets when they leave office:

Anthony D. Weiner has demystified the details of the 906-page Affordable Care Act for an electronic medical records company. 

He has counseled a biofuel firm about expansion into the emerging markets of Latin America and Africa. 

And he has plunged into the world of start-ups with his own green energy business. 

Over the past two years, it appeared as if Mr. Weiner, once the irrepressible fireball of New York City politics, had spent his days as a stay-at-home dad, licking his wounds and mourning his ambitions after the salacious images and messages that he sent to women prompted his resignation from Congress. 

But it turns out that from the moment he left public view, the man who had relied on a government paycheck his entire adult life was consumed by a corporate career whose profits and progress came to him, by his own account, with remarkable ease. 

...

 

It did not take Mr. Weiner long to embark on a new career after he left Congress on June 16, 2011. On July 7, he quietly incorporated a new firm, Woolf Weiner Associates, named for his great-grandfather, an Austrian immigrant to the Lower East Side. 

Since then, Mr. Weiner said, he has advised more than a dozen companies. He disclosed the names of a few of them after they agreed to waive confidentiality agreements. 

He signed up a New York firm called CureMD, an electronic medical records provider. And he became a consultant to Covington & Burling, an international law firm. 

In interviews, executives at those companies described Mr. Weiner as a quick and nimble student of their businesses with an innate sense of how to navigate the rhythms and personalities of government.

At Parabel, Mr. Weiner was credited with distilling the company’s complex business model into easy-to-understand sales pitches for potential investors and foreign officials, at times to the amazement of the businessmen in the room. Mr. Gubnitsky recalled how Mr. Weiner employed the concept of “economic ecosystems” to highlight the positive impact of the firm’s technology on farmers and consumers. 

Mr. Weiner has advised Covington & Burling as it seeks to persuade the Federal Communications Commission to relax its long-standing objections to major foreign investment in the broadcast industry. He has tutored the firm on the key players and their political sensitivities, using knowledge gleaned from his tenure on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. 

Mr. Weiner said he had reached out to federal officials at the Energy and Agriculture Departments, as well as members of Congress, on behalf of his clients. But he insisted that the work did not meet the legal definition of lobbying, which he said his contracts made clear he would not do. 

He can call these gigs whatever he wants to call them - the truth is, companies pay him for the contacts and access he has to people in government.

In other words, he is a lobbyist.

Again, most of these politicians do exactly the same thing when they leave office.

It's how Weiner could go from a Forest Hills apartment to a Park Avenue address.

I say, if he's so good at this particular kind of activity, he ought to stay in it.

Cuomo Slides In Popularity - And The Bigger Slide Is To Still To Come

The Post reports the state GOP thinks Cuomo is a little more vulnerable these days

Controversy over the gun-control law Cuomo pushed through the Legislature in January following the Newtown, Conn., school massacre helped drive the first-term Democrat’s job approval ratings from 74 percent last December to 55 percent last month in Quinnipiac University polls.

The latest survey found him losing in the New York suburbs and upstate to GOP Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey in a hypothetical presidential run.

“The drop in Cuomo’s approval offers the chance for Republicans to seriously take him in this election,” said DC-based GOP political strategist Ron Bonjean, who previously served as a top aide to GOP leadership in the House and Senate. “It also has the potential of dragging Cuomo further into the political quicksand.”

The GOP believes Cuomo has begun making other politically exploitable missteps, including:

* Delaying a decision on whether to green-light the controversial, natural-gas drilling technique known as fracking, which has divided the state.

* Obtaining luxury seats for himself and top aides at the Buffalo Bills’ stadium in a deal to keep the state’s only NFL team from leaving.

* Cutting aid for the developmentally disabled and planning an election-year tax rebate for families while other taxes and fees increase.

Cuomo's former pal, Fred Dicker, writes in today's Post that Cuom faces a "lose-lose" on the fracking decision that is sure to further drive down his numbers:

Gov. Cuomo is paralyzed with indecision on “fracking’’ for natural gas because it’s a “lose-lose’’ situation where even Southern Tier residents who should benefit financially will be bitterly disappointed, a highly placed political source has told The Post.

Cuomo, who has dithered for more than two years on whether to OK the drilling process, which is used safely in nearly 30 other states, fears that his planned “toughest-in-the-nation” regulations and low natural-gas prices have combined to make it unlikely major gas companies would make the investments needed to develop new wells, the source said.

“His fear is that if he gives the go-ahead, nothing is going to happen, the gas companies won’t come in because of overregulation, and gas-price economics and the people [in the] Southern Tier will then say, ‘Look, Cuomo killed it another way.’

“Cuomo’s regulators plan to impose almost impossible restrictions, natural-gas prices are way down, and the governor knows that the less valuable ‘dry’ natural gas is in the [Southern Tier’s] Marcellus Shale, not the valuable ‘wet’ gas that the companies are going after now,’’ the source continued.

“The drilling decision is, and has been all along, about what the governor can gain from it, and right now, he doesn’t see himself gaining anything, whatever he does,’’ explained the source, who has strong ties to Cuomo’s campaign contributors.

After telling associates for nearly two years he believed natural-gas drilling could be conducted safely, Cuomo developed cold feet late last year in the wake of an increasingly aggressive “anti’’ movement led by environmental activists, including his former brother-in-law and uncle to his three daughters, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who say the process is dangerous.

Cuomo, who has publicly claimed for three years — from when he began running for governor — that the “science and not the politics” would guide his decision, now maintains that he’s merely awaiting a final recommendation from state Health Commissioner Dr. Nirav Shah, supposedly expected within days.

But few close to Cuomo believe that’s the case. Many say that the governor — who has taken a radical turn to the political left since the start of the year — is being guided by political considerations alone.

A Cuomo spokesman denied that the governor was holding off on a decision for political reasons.

Of course Hamlet on the Hudson Jr. is holding up the fracking decision for political reasons.

Because whichever decision he makes, he stands to lose substantial support.

If he decides to go ahead with fracking, he loses support from liberals and environmentalists; if he decides to ban fracking in NY State for good, he makes his business cronies and Wall Street donors (not to mention Rupert Murdoch and Fred Dicker) very unhappy.

So unless Cuomo finds some magical way to thread the needle on the issue and never make a decision one way or the other, he stands to lose more support in the coming months and drop below that 50% range.

Couple that with the controversial sports stadium giveaway to the Bills, the gun law that has pissed off some former supporters, and his extension of taxes on his wealthy base in the latest budget and the ethically-challenged Cuomo has a whole bunch of trouble coming on both the right and the left of the political spectrum.

Make no mistake - liberals and environmentalists do not trust him on fracking any more than his business cronies and fracking proponents do.

Newark Teachers Hammer Union Leaders Over Sell-Out Contract

Over 1,000 members of the 3,300 member Newark Teachers Union met union leaders tonight to discuss the sell-out contract negotiated this week between the NTU and Newark public schools:

Leaders of the Newark Teachers Union faced a barrage of criticism from rank and file members tonight over the historic three-year contract signed Friday that, for the first time, will offer annual bonuses of up to $12,500 to top teachers.

Many of the teachers and school employees who spoke during the meeting at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center urged fellow members to reject the contract when it is voted on by the union’s 3,300 members on Monday.

"It’s not everything I wanted, and it’s not everything you deserve," union President Joseph Del Grosso told the 1,000 people who gathered tonight. "You’re going to vote on it, so it’s in your hands."

Teachers complained the $5,000 annual bonuses offered for teachers rated ‘highly effective’ according to a new four-tiered evaluation system will be impossible to attain. Others expressed fears that merit pay would pit one teacher against another and diminish the overall quality of education.

...


Under the contract, teachers can also earn bonuses of up to $5,000 for working in the district’s lowest performing schools and $2,500 for teaching subjects with shortages like math and science. Base salaries in the contract will increase by 13.9 percent over three years.

Teachers have been working without a contract for the past two years and as part of the new agreement, every union member will receive a slice of the $31 million dedicated to retroactive pay. No teacher will get less than $3,500 and veteran educators could earn up to $12,000. Half the money for back pay and bonuses will come from private donors, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who has donated $100 million to improve the city’s schools.

Teachers who spoke at tonight’s meeting, however, said the one-time checks won’t make up for the salary increases they could have had if a contract had been reached two years ago.

Del Grosso tried to tame the crowd, repeatedly reminding the teachers to "be professional," but he was frequently shouted over.

He also said the union could walk out on Tuesday if the contract is voted down, even though teacher strikes are illegal in New Jersey.

"This contract is a piece of garbage that will divide the union," one teacher said. "Wait three years until we can get something better."

A lot of people met Del Grosso and the union leadership tonight and it doesn't sound like too many of them are happy with this sell-out contract.

We'll have to see how the vote goes, but if tonight is any indication, Randi Weingarten and the rest of the corporate shills at the AFT and the NTU might have some trouble getting this "piece of garbage that will divide the union" passed.

And that's of course exactly what this contract is meant to do - divide teachers, pit school staffs against each other, pit young against old, pit other teachers in New Jersey against teachers in Newark if they agree to this contract and merit pay comes to other towns and municipalities.

The NTU leadership and Weingarten ought to be ashamed they're pushing this piece of shit contract onto Newark teachers, but they're incapable of that emotion.

They're too busy sucking up to the corporatocracy as they collect their six figure salaries and benefits and sell working teachers down the river with these "innovative" contracts Weingarten and the education reformers/corporatocracy love so much.

It's time to rid the AFT and the locals of these corporate shills and bring in leadership that defends public schools and teachers from the horrors of corporate education reform.

Bertha Coombs: Dumbest Tweet Of The Day

The NY Times is running an article today about the increase in cheating in schools.

CNBC's Bertha Coombs tweets the following about the story:

NYTimes: Studies Find More Students Cheating -Are shame & guilt obsolete? How do you sleep when you "succeed" cheating?

Coombs covers the financial markets - you know, the venue where Goldman Sachs bundled worthless financial products to unsuspecting customers while shorting those same products because they knew they were worthless and made hundreds of millions of dollars both coming and going.

This is the same market where MF Global "lost" a billion dollars of customer money making trades they weren't supposed to trade but no individual was ever brought to account for the loss.

It is the same market where 16 banks colluded to "fix" the LIBOR rate that underlies most financial products and loans in order to, first, make more money, and then later in '08, to make their books look better than they were.

And Coombs has the nerve, the audacity to ask how students can sleep at night knowing they've succeeded by cheating?

She is either the dumbest person on the planet or the most compliant corporate shill there is.

You want to see some cheaters who got ahead by cheating, Bertha?

Look the fuck around you.

You're surrounded by liars, cheats, con artists, pirates, and corporate criminals - and that's just in the CNBC offices.

This nation is run by cheaters in Washington, on Wall Street, in the media.

The kids are just learning the lessons they see from the adults around them - and they're learning them well.

The Best and Brightest are cheating in Stuyvesant High and at Harvard.

And soon most of them will take that cheating someplace where they can really cash in - Wall Street and the corridors of power in Washington.