John Flanagan Looks To Stick It To Schools, Make Tax Cap Permanent

From Joseph Spector at Politics on the Hudson:

The state’s property-tax cap expires next year, and new Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan introduced legislation Friday to make it permanent and decouple it from rent-control laws in New York City.

The move by Flanagan, R-Suffolk County, and Senate Republicans is their latest attempt to make the tax cap, put into effect in 2011, a permanent law amid protests from schools, unions and local governments.

Flanagan said in a statement Sunday that the Senate would act as early as this week to approve the bill.

More mandates on schools, less money to carry those resources out.

That's the neoliberal game here.

Flanagan's game.

Cuomo To Mandate All CUNY And SUNY Students Do Internships

Because what all students need is to be forced to do free labor in order to get a college degree, Governor Cuomo is going to mandate "experiential learning" for all CUNY and SUNY grads:

Part Q - Make experiential learning a graduation requirement at SUNY and CUNY

Purpose:

This bill would make experiential learning a mandatory requirement for graduation at the State University of New York and the City University of New York to ensure our public institutions of higher education connect students to employers and jobs.

Summary of Provisions and Statement in Support:

This bill would amend Education Law to require the Boards of Trustees of the State University of New York and the City University of New York to each pass a resolution  making experiential learning or applied learning activities a mandatory requirement for graduation.

To gain employment after graduation, it is no longer sufficient for a student simply to attain a degree or certificate in a specific field. Rather, students must also demonstrate work readiness and prior relevant experience to prospective employers. Experiential learning such as cooperative education ("co-op") and internships provide a win-win-win for New York's businesses, colleges, and -- most importantly -- students.

Budget Implications:

Enactment of this bill is necessary to implement the 2015-16 Executive Budget.

Effective Date: This bill would take effect April 1, 2015

Even better, notice this language:

Enactment of this bill is necessary to implement the 2015-16 Executive Budget.

Experiential learning may be a great idea but there's no reason why it needs to be mandated by the governor and shoved into the budget with a "Yay or Nay" vote from the Legislature.

Let each SUNY and CUNY program make it's own decisions on "experiential learning" and enact (or not) their own proposals accordingly.

The Stony Brook Statesman covered this story yesterday SUNY students are NOT happy with this AT ALL:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing for experiential learning through internships and/or part-time jobs as a new graduation requirement for all SUNY students in his proposed SUNY budget for next year.

Frederick Walter, the former president of the Stony Brook University Senate who currently serves on the SUNY Senate, said Stony Brook is ahead of the curve as the current Stony Brook Curriculum calls for experiential learning upon graduation; however, how the Governor describes experiential learning and how Stony Brook University does are completely different.

The SBC asks that students at some point learn through experience, whether it be through internships, jobs, research, scholarly activity or service learning, among other experiences. Cuomo’s plan would mandate experiential learning through internships.

According to Walter, an internship would definitely help a business or journalism major, but certain students would not benefit from working as an office intern, but they rather need experience in study labs doing research and experimentations.

Issues with experiential learning being mandated by the Governor go beyond a lack of an explanation of exactly what experiential learning is. There are over 60 SUNY campuses, not counting CUNY schools, which also fall under the list of SUNY campuses.

As Walter pointed out, this mandate would be “a system-wide thing. There are 400,000 students in the SUNY system. It is huge…there aren’t enough companies in the state of N.Y. offering internships.” Not only that, but with over 60 unique schools, mandating the same requirements for all would be foolish, Walter said.

Stony Brook University professor and Director of the Center for News Literacy Dean Miller noted additional issues. Experiential learning should be a requirement “only if students have access to it” and “so many students can’t afford internships because so many of them are unpaid,” he said.

Some are wondering just where Cuomo got his education expertise:

Requiring all students to gain an internship would force certain disadvantaged students into picking up unpaid spots, which is “lunacy,” Miller said. 

Cuomo has faced opposition for trying to mandate this.

Walter said many SUNY Senate members wonder why the governor is mandating curriculum, as no governor has done so previously. 

Cuomo is a politician not a professor, therefore he does not fully understand what he is mandating.

The response from Cuomo?

The Governor’s Press Office did not comment.

Since when does the governor get to act like dictator in New York State and mandate whatever he wants in the budget?

Since Pataki took the Legislature to court and won that power:

Cuomo is also potentially testing the limits with which policy matters can be included in appropriations bills, a matter that was first considered in the landmark ruling Pataki v. Silver.

That ruling allowed governor’s significant leeway in budget-making powers, which Gov. David Paterson used to his own advantage in ramming major spending cuts through the “extender” process when the budget was passed its April 1 due date.

Cuomo's shoving more and more policy into the budget in order to push legislation that he wants that might be more problematic if the Legislature were to vote on it straight up.

This "experiential learning" mandate is particularly problematic because, as the Stony Brook Statesman notes, there are 400,000 students in the SUNY system.

There are another 480,000 CUNY students - that means there an awful lot of internships students are going to be looking for in order too graduate if Cuomo gets his way.

If you thought Cuomo's education reform plans for K-12 are insane, take heart - so are his education reform plans for CUNY and SUNY.

Isn't it time we take back our democratic form of government from the autocratic Governor Cuomo?

New York Goes From 8th To 20th In Education Performance Under Andrew Cuomo

Interesting piece of data in Pedro Noguera's Time-Union opinion piece decrying the Cuomo budget:

With Gov. Andrew Cuomo emerging as a champion of charter schools, what does it mean for the 97 percent of students in New York who attend public schools?

Outside major cities, most people have never heard of a charter school. They are focused instead on their local public school, where the situation is often quite disturbing.

There are a lot of problems, including the botched rollout of the common core standards, but the key problem is funding. More than 90 percent of school districts now receive less operating aid from the state than they did five years ago. Some wealthy school districts are able to cope with less funding, but most districts have had to increase class size and make cuts to cuts to art, music and foreign language, as well as advanced placement and honors courses.

We now have two systems of education in New York: In prosperous communities, we have well-funded, high-performing schools; and in less prosperous communities all across the state, we have under-funded schools and struggling students.

This widening gap is the main reason New York's ranking for overall education performance has dropped from 8th in the nation when Cuomo took office to 20th today.

No one in Albany has a plan to address the funding inequality that is the root of this problem. Instead, the governor has chosen to focus on charter schools as if they were the answer to all problems.

In fact, Cuomo is exacerbating the problem with budget after budget, sticking districts with more and more mandates even as he starves them of more and more money.

And don't think this is a mistake on Cuomo's part - he is quite literally the governor of charter schools only and his plan is to make as many traditional public schools fail as he possibly can and hand them off to his charter school operator buddies and his Wall Street/hedge fundie buddies.

I think this is the piece that some people are missing with Cuomo's budgets and mandates - they're part of an intentional strategy to undermine and destroy the public school system in the state and bring privatization to areas outside of NYC.

Someone Should Sue Cuomo Over The Unfunded Mandates In NY State

From North Jersey.com:

The Saddle Brook Schools may join with several other local school districts in a lawsuit appealing unfunded state education mandates.

Superintendent Dr. Richard Katz at the Jan. 15 school board meeting said that school districts including Denville, Montville, Readington and Wayne have been making appeals either to the New Jersey Council of Local Mandates, or directly to the Commissioner of Education about unfunded mandates.

Katz said they are specifically appealing the new Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) standardized tests, the Common Core Curriculum and Achieve New Jersey because they cost a tremendous amount of money to implement and receive no additional funding. Board attorney Isabel Machado is representing several of the districts and reached out to Saddle Brook, Katz said.

Ultimately, they are seeking an order from the Council of Local Mandates that rules the latest unfunded mandates unconstitutional. "I don't see PARCC or Common Core going away as a result of that, but what could come out of it if we prevail is some kind of funding," Katz said. If it's ruled unconstitutional, he added, the district would no longer be responsible for funding the programs.

Katz said they are specifically appealing the new Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) standardized tests, the Common Core Curriculum and Achieve New Jersey because they cost a tremendous amount of money to implement and receive no additional funding.

Board attorney Isabel Machado is representing several of the districts and reached out to Saddle Brook, Katz said. Ultimately, they are seeking an order from the Council of Local Mandates that rules the latest unfunded mandates unconstitutional.

"I don't see PARCC or Common Core going away as a result of that, but what could come out of it if we prevail is some kind of funding," Katz said.

If it's ruled unconstitutional, he added, the district would no longer be responsible for funding the programs.

In NY, the state has added more and more mandates ever since Race to the Top, overburdening districts even as state aid remains below 2009 levels.

Perhaps a few districts banding together and suing over some of those costly mandates - like the APPR mandate - is in order.

Time To Sue Arne Duncan And The USDOE

From Politico:

An unprecedented set of recent Education Department decisions about No Child Left Behind waivers is at the least an overreach and at the very worst illegal, a chorus of critics say.

Last week, the department declared NCLB waivers for Kansas, Oregon and Washington state “high-risk” because each state has more work to do in tying student growth to teacher evaluations – a major requirement for states that want out of the more arduous provisions of the law. And in early August, the department granted waivers to eight districts in California, the first time the department bypassed states on No Child Left Behind flexibility.

Observers and analysts say the department’s high-risk waiver decision simply isn’t allowed under federal law. And they say Education Secretary Arne Duncan broke with what he told Congress in February about a preference not to grant district waivers, which these critics think are just plain bad policy. NCLB is long overdue for reauthorization. With that renewal nowhere in sight, Duncan has granted more than 40 waivers of the law to states, D.C. and the group of California districts, freeing states from requirements such as having all students reading and doing math at grade level by the 2013-14 school year.

“Why deal with pesky Congress when you get to make all the rules?” said Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The department doesn’t have the authority to declare waivers high-risk, he said, and one of the states should call Duncan’s bluff.

“One of these states should sue,” Petrilli said. “It’s absolutely nuts.”

Kansas, Oregon and Washington state received one-year, conditional waivers in 2012 that could be extended for another year if they complete the necessary work on their evaluation systems, but the department feels they haven’t hit the mark. If the states don’t get their teacher evaluation systems in order, they could lose their waivers.

“Many conservatives would say he’s rewriting the law,” Petrilli added. “Some of this really is uncharted territory, and while the administration has the authority to issue waivers, they do not have the authority to issue mandates on the waivers.”

Indeed - the Secretary of Education does not have the power to force states to tie teacher evaluation systems to test scores through the NCLB waiver process.

For that matter, the Secretary of Education cannot do anything to states once the RttT money runs out if they get rid of their teacher evaluation systems tied to test scores and the rest of the RttT mandates they agreed to in order to win the RttT money.

And when did Duncan get the power to offer waivers to districts on their own?

Oh, right - he doesn't have that power.

The state of California should sue as well.

As Petrilli says in the Politico article, somebody should call Duncan's bluff.

Frederick Hess agrees:

Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the high-risk waivers set a troubling precedent that stretches the federal role in “novel and problematic ways.”

“It seems to me to be inconsistent with the law, especially given there’s no language enabling the secretary to impose new conditions in exchange for a waiver,” he said. “So, while there’s always a little murkiness on this stuff, if push comes to shove, I regard them as illegal.”

States need to test the USDOE on their mandates in court.

It's time to sue Duncan and the USDOE.

 

He doesn't have the powers he is exerting.

 

It is crucial that some entity push back on this or he and every Secretary of Education after him will claim these powers through precedent.

Maybe Sequestration Can Teach Some Important Lessons

According to Capital Confidential, the federal government puts in 8% of what education costs in this state - the rest comes from the state budget and local property taxes.

How many mandates does the federal government impose upon this state and its school districts in return for that money?

Do these some of these mandates (Yes, Race to the Top, I am looking at you!) cost the state more than the feds actually give?

What if these sequestration cuts gave us all an epiphany moment where we realized some of this fed money costs more in mandates and might not actually be worth taking?

Because even as the feds cut aid to the state, we are going to have to continue with all the RttT reforms, the Common Core Federal Standards implementation, the high stakes national standardized tests derived from those standards, the computers and bandwidth needed in every school in order to give those tests, the data tracking systems in order to analyze those scores and use them as a bludgeon against teachers and schools.

That's an awful lot of money we have to put out just to win $700 million in RttT money.

Maybe we can channel Nancy Reagan here and "Just at no?"

Maybe the sequestration cuts will give us that epiphany money to at least question why we take federal money with mandates attached that wind up costing the state more in the long run?