It Pays To Associate With Governor Cuomo If You're A Lobbyist

From WXXI News:

Overall spending on lobbying related activities actually dropped by $10 million dollars after reaching a high point in 2011.  The decrease is due to a decline in money spent on television ads.

A lobby group closely associated with Governor Andrew Cuomo, the Committee to Save New York, spent millions of dollars on television ads promoting  Cuomo’s agenda in the first two years he was governor.  That group has now disbanded, but the Democratic State Committee, which is controlled by Cuomo, spent millions on TV ads in 2013 that also backed Cuomo’s top legislative and budget priorities. Political parties don’t have to register as lobbyists.

Mahoney, with NYPIRG, says the Committee to Save New York and Democratic Party ads may have scared other interests groups off. In the past they spent millions on negative ads that plagued former Governors.

This year  Cuomo is using his own funds from his $33 million dollar campaign war chest to finance ads. Many of Cuomo’s donations come from top lobbyists and lobbying interests.

The report also shows that it also pays , apparently, to associate with the governor. Former US Senator Al D’Amato is now a lobbyist with Park Strategies. His firm saw a 61% increase in business from 2012 to 2013.  D’Amato, a Republican, has already said he’ll back  Cuomo for re election.

Meanwhile, the lobbying firm headed by Pat Lynch, a former communications director for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, saw a 17% decline in her business.

Anybody think it's an accident that D'Amato's firm saw a 61% increase in business from 2012 to 2013 while a lobbying firm run by a former Silver aide saw a 17% decrease?

The chutzpah Cuomo showed to declare the legislature a cesspool of corruption and use the Moreland Commission against them when the stench of rot emanates just as deeply from his own office.

Weingarten And Mulgrew Look To Take Us Backward

If and when the pro-Andrew Cuomo forces backed by UFT President Michael Mulgrew and AFT President Randi Weingarten take over the NYSUT this weekend, the fight that NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi and others in the NYSUT leadership have shown against Andrew Cuomo, SED Commissioner King and Regents Chancellor Tisch in recent months will disappear, replaced by complacency with the education reform status quo.

That's what this internecine fight in NYSUT, pushed by Mulgrew and Weingarten at a time when teachers and the the unions are most vulnerable across this state, is about - the "collaborationist" union leaders at the UFT and AFT wanting to turn the clock back to a time when the union went along with whatever Andy Cuomo, John King, Merryl Tisch and the plutocrat who owns us all, Bill Gates, want in their education reform agenda.

The way the votes are calculated in this election, the Mulgrew and Weingarten forces of surrender have the upper hand and are expected to win pretty easily.

Given the track record of Mulgarten at the UFT and AFT, that's a very bad thing indeed.

Just recently we watched Randi Weingarten and Michael Mulgrew do NOTHING as Andrew Cuomo took Bill de Blasio to the woodshed over charter school expansions.

The NY Times reported that the de Blasio had no allies in the fight, not even the unions, and soon lost everything to Cuomo and the charter entrepreneurs.

Weingarten issued some muted jive on Twitter about how she criticized the budget, but the truth is, Weingarten and Mulgrew could have mobilized their respective unions to fight these charter giveaways that amount to an absolute right to expansion for charter entrepreneurs on the city's dime, but chose to remain effectively quiet in the fight - a fight literally created by Andrew Cuomo as a payback to his campaign donors.

Michael Fiorillo summed up the AFT/UFT response to Cuomo and the charter entrepreneur putsch like this:

Does this (mis)leadership ever fight anything?

So, the APPR deal, which never should have been agreed to in the first place, will be tweaked - which would have happened anyway, since the admins are being crushed by it - in exchange for allowing charters to run wild, which is guaranteed to reduce UFT membership substantially in the coming years, as the charter cap is enlarged or eliminated altogether.

I have said that the UFT is a dues collection agency, but I was obviously wrong, since a real dues collection agency would have a better sense of self-preservation.

Cuomo and his backers from Hedgistan must be laughing among themselves when they observe the rubes from the UFT; it's no wonder that, behind their occasional condescending remarks, they think of us as chumps.

And:

These people are bought and sold. 

Weingrew thinks that the members will be mollified by a (five year late) contract - obtained while stabbing De Blasio in the back - despite the unending concessions (Common Core, APPR, VAM, charters run wild, etc) that he has made.

Are these people deluded, actually thinking they will organize charter schools? Or is something else allowing them to agree to the public school's and the union's eventual destruction?

That's the leadership we now have poised to take back control of NYSUT after Iannuzzi and others in the NYSUT leadership starting fighting back against the corporate education reform forces by issuing a no-confidence vote in SED Commissioner King, withdrawing support for Common Core and calling for an end to the "Sit and Stare" policies meant to harm children who opt out of state tests.

The Mulgarten forces of surrender aren't very good at protecting teachers because they don't care anything about that - they care only about maintaining their own power and privileges, maintaining their "seat at the table" with Andy Cuomo, Barack Obama and the plutocrat behind those functionaries, Bill Gates.

It's a shame that just when the NYSUT leadership started to show real fight against the corporate education reform forces, Weingarten and Mulgrew decided they needed to take the union backward.

But it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody who is a faithful reader of this blog or Norm Scott's Ed Notes Online, James Eterno's ICEUFT blog, Arthur Goldstein's NYC Educator blog, or Chaz's School Daze blog.

That's what Weingarten and Mulgrew are in power to do - to make it look to members like they're fighting for teachers while in reality they cave on issue after issue after issue.

In my 13 years as a UFT member, I have seen my union "collaborate" to give up seniority rights, tenure protections (make no mistake, APPR does JUST that) and teacher autonomy while agreeing to a new test-based evaluation system so complex no one can explain it (and brag about how good it was!) and Teacher Data Reports that saw teacher's error-riddled test score-based ratings end up in the newspapers with their names attached.

That's the track record of the AFT/UFT Mulgarten forces of surrender and that's what they are about to ensure comes back to the NYSUT again.

God help us all if and when they succeed.

Newark Star-Ledger Lays Off 25% Of Non-Unionized Newsroom Employees

Brutal:

In a grim day of reckoning at the state’s largest newspaper, the owners of The Star-Ledger today said they were eliminating the jobs of approximately 167 people, including 25 percent of the newsroom.

The sweeping job loss was part of a plan announced last week in an effort to greatly reduce costs and combine resources by consolidating the operations of The Star-Ledger, along with its sister publications in New Jersey and its online partner, NJ.com, which also announced cutbacks today.

The Star-Ledger, which has won three Pulitzer Prizes and several national awards, currently has 750 employees, of which approximately 500 are non unionized. None of the cuts announced today will affect unionized personnel, who are covered under existing labor contracts.

The cuts will mean the loss of 40 of the 156 reporters, editors, photographers and support staff in The Star-Ledger newsroom, which had already seen a parade of people leaving in recent weeks over concerns about the paper’s future and the continuing fiscal pressures affecting newspapers across the country. One of those leaving voluntarily had been slated to be cut.

The newsroom is not unionized.

Will the non-unionized, union-hating editorial writers continue to write editorials about the evils of teachers unions and such?

Or were they laid off in the carnage too?

Oh, but some of these Star-Ledger employees may be hired back - at lower pay:

 Those being let go will not necessarily leave immediately. In packets that were being handed out this morning, those being told their jobs were being eliminated were offered severance packages if they agreed to stay with the newspaper until NJ Advance Media, new media company being formed, is up and running.

Star-Ledger employees receiving offer letters of jobs with the new company in some cases were being given different positions or titles, some at lower pay. They will have a week to decide to accept the offer, the offer letters said. 

The unions took hard contracts last year including job losses, so unionized employees didn't go untouched in this mess.

It is a very challenging environment for the creative classes these days - especially writers.

Soon there will only be jobs in finance and services - everything in between will be gone, killed by the Internets, technological advances and globalization.

Cuomo Administration: Middle Class Is $300,000 A Year, Upper Middle Is $500,000

The Cuomo administration explaining its "middle class tax cuts":

In defense of new regressive tax cuts in the most economically unequal state in America, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aide tonight told the Journal News that those making $500,000 a year are merely “upper middle class” and those making $300,000 a year are “middle class.” In fact, the median household income in New York is $53,046 and in wealthy Westchester County it is $79,585. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, those making $500,000 a year salary are among the top 1 percent of New York’s earners. - Sirota

Yeah, middle class is $300,000 a year, upper middle class is $500,000 a year.

They must be talking about Eva Moskowitz, who makes over $475,000 a year.

Not too many people in that "middle class" tax bracket.

Andrew Cuomo, class warrior, cutting taxes for his wealthy campaign donors, then claiming he's helping out the "middle class."

De Blasio Says "Teacher Retention" Is Key Goal For Public Education Policy

From an interview with Chris Smith of New York:

With pre-K and charters dominating the conversation, there’s been little attention to de Blasio’s fuzzier agenda for the million-plus kids already attending conventional public schools. “We’re going to focus on teacher retention, which I think is a huge difference-maker, because we’re hemorrhaging quality teachers,” he says. “Why is Finland so wonderful? Because teachers are incredibly well prepared, and they do it as a lifelong career. That’s where I’m trying to move us, and I think we can get there.”

That goal is of course at odds with Cuomo's goal, and indeed the goals of many education reformers, which is to create "burn and churn" in the teacher ranks - move 'em in, burn 'em out, watch 'em go before they're vested for a pension.

UFT Contract Negotiations Update

Bill de Blasio in an interview with Chris Smith of New York:

It’s obviously incredibly complicated, and there’s a lot on the line, and we want to get it right. So the conversations over the last weeks have been quite good, and substantive, and collegial. But it’s impossible at this moment to determine whether it’s enough to get us done by that point (June 30)."

Collegial and substantive, but not close to any deals - that seems to be the gist.

Has anybody out there heard anything different?

Common Core Contradictions

 From a commenter at NRO:

Common Core is, itself, a contradiction: it professes to help get kids ready for college and careers while at the same time it destroys the very tools they need to learn to do just that. For English standards, Common Core favors informational texts over fiction while completely deleting poetry and art interpretation from the curriculum. In Math, Common Core seems blatantly to create a nation of idiots but, most worrying, is the complete deletion of any learning of algebraic manipulation. These selectively deleted areas of study are so very worrying because they have one major thing in common: they teach kids how to do critical thinking. They also teach kids how to think creatively and to think outside the box (yes, algebra too). Without these skills, how on earth are kids supposed to succeed in college or careers, let alone in high school? If future generations cannot think critically and creatively, if they do not learn how to question what they see and if they cannot think for themselves then they become sheep. But, isn't that the point? The sheer amount of political messaging in Common Core texts and even math problems would seem to prove just that. However, the lack of poetry and art and fiction takes away something else from kids: the opportunity to feel, to have an emotional reaction to what you read or see. The Common Core website explicitly states that kids shouldn't be exposed to any material they may cause an emotional reaction because that somehow takes away their "safe space." But reacting emotionally to the world is what makes us human. A purposeful denial of this doesn't just turn kids into sheep, it turns them into robots. Automatons for the collective......

I think there is little doubt that the developers and promoters of Common Core - diminished human beings like David "No one gives a shit what you think or feel" Coleman and Bill Gates - have stripping children of their emotional reactions and autonomy as a CCSS goal.

There's a reason why the only learning that is privileged in CCSS is text-to-text close reading.

It's because the developers not only don't give a shit what kids think or feel about stuff, they don't want kids thinking or feeling about stuff at all.

Just follow the orders the teachers gives you.

Regurgitate what you just read.

Be good little automatons.

Will Oklahoma Be The Second State To "Ditch" The Common Core?

From National Review Online:

The Oklahoma state senate passed a bill Tuesday to withdraw the state from the Common Core standards. If the bill is signed by Governor Mary Fallin, Oklahoma will become the second state to withdraw from the Common Core.

Indiana withdrew last week, with Governor Mike Pence’s signature.

The bill to get the Sooner State was hugely popular in both houses. House Bill 3399 was approved by the state house in a 78 to 12 vote before being sent to the state senate for amendments. On Tuesday, the state senate voted 37 to 10 in favor of the bill. The bill will now go to the House for another vote before being sent to the governor’s desk.

Oklahoma was one of the first states to adopt the Common Core standards in June of 2010, after a vote by the state board of education. However, the Sooner State later dropped out of the Common Core’s standardized testing consortium in the summer of 2013.

State representative Jason Nelson, an author and co-sponsor to withdraw the state from the CCSS, told NRO the bill will pass the Assembly a second time and be signed into law by the governor.

Some of these states that are allegedly dumping Common Core are simply renaming the standards and making minor changes - and Oklahoma sorta sounds like they're going down that road.

Listen to the ed jargon from Governor Fallin:

Fallin wrote that she would support legislation repealing the Common Core, if the legislation “increases classroom rigor and accountability while guaranteeing that Oklahoma public education is protected from federal interference.”

And indeed, here is what the bill, if passed into law, would do:

HB 3399 still allows the Oklahoma state board of education — in consultation with the state’s higher education and vocational training systems– to preserve aspects of the Common Core standards, if it so chooses.

“Specifically, the bill says that the state cannot cede its control over our standards or our student assessments,” Nelson says, “or relinquish our authority over those standards and assessments.” The bill, he says, would still leave the state free to use selected Common Core standards.

So while it sounds exciting that Oklahoma is potentially joining Indiana in dropping the CCSS, the devil is in the details of what comes next if and when the bill is signed into law.

There's an awful lot of posturing on the part of legislators trying to make the CCSS critics and opponents happy while keeping the CCSS basically in place.

We've certainly seen that in NY State and we're kinda seeing that in states that are allegedly "dropping" CCSS too.

PEF President Wants To See Someone From Left Primary Cuomo

Can you imagine anybody from the Mulgarten-controlled AFT/UFT (and perhaps soon to be NYSUT) saying anything like this?

The state Democratic and Working Families parties should find a primary challenger to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the president of one of the state’s top public-employees unions said today.

Susan Kent, the president of the Public Employees Federation, said the Democratic governor hasn’t lived up to the ideals of the parties and should be challenged.

“I’m hopeful that the Democratic Party will come up with a primary candidate,” Kent told Gannett’s Albany Bureau. “I think that it’s important, especially in light of this budget, where progressive issues were really not pushed by the governor. I think it’s incumbent on the Democratic Party, the Working Families Party to come up with a primary challenger if they want to be true to the spirit of the parties.”

Kent’s comments are the latest sign of dissatisfaction by liberal groups and unions with Cuomo, who is seeking a second term in November.

Kent said she doesn’t expect the union, which has 55,000 members and is the second largest public-employee union in the state, to endorse Cuomo. She knocked the union’s prior leadership for backing Cuomo in 2010.

She said she doesn’t think “my members would be in any mood to endorse this governor.” She said she would be willing to talk to GOP candidate Rob Astorino.

Of course the UFT's Michael Mulgrew just bragged at last month's DA what a swell relationship he has with the union-hating, public school-hating Andrew Cuomo, so doubtful we'll hear anything from the UFT about primarying Cuomo.

But PEF's Kent seems to really want it:

Kent said she’s been talking to the AFL-CIO and the Working Families Party about taking on Cuomo.

“If we look at why the Working Families Party was founded, I’d say this should be job one for them right now,” Kent said. Cuomo’s “all about approval ratings. What we need to do is really tell the public what is going on here; what is a smoke screen.”

Meanwhile Mulgarten are looking to take over the NYSUT this weekend in the election and turn the leadership back into pro-Andy Cuomo shills. 

Isn't it time Mulgrew and Weingarten are sent packing to their post-union leadership StudentsFirst or Gates Foundation gigs like that former DC union guy and replaced with leadership that fights for the rank and file?

This Would Get Under Cuomo's Skin

From State of Politics:

Former New York City Councilman Charles Barron this week filed paperwork with the state Board of Elections to run for the state Assembly seat vacated by his wife, Inez, records show. 

The move for Charles Barron is not unexpected. 

Barron, left the Council due to term limits, and had been telegraphing for months he would run for the Brooklyn-based district. 

The former Black Panther has something of a knack for getting under the skin of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. 

... 

Expect Barron, should he win the Assembly seat, to be a vocal and recognizable figure in the chamber.

The corporate folks will come out of the woodwork to oppose Barron for the Assembly seat, as they did in the Congressional primary against corporate Dem/DFER ally Hakeem Jeffries.

What Did The UFT Leadership Get To Look The Other Way On Cuomo's Charter Deal?

Michael Fiorillo on the news confirmed today by the NY Times that the UFT leadership did nothing to fight the charter school protections Cuomo wanted enshrined in the budget that give charters unlimited expansion rights, free rent in NYC public school buildings or the tab picked up by the NYCDOE and other goodies that the charter entrepreneurs wanted:

Does this (mis)leadership ever fight anything?

So, the APPR deal, which never should have been agreed to in the first place, will be tweaked - which would have happened anyway, since the admins are being crushed by it - in exchange for allowing charters to run wild, which is guaranteed to reduce UFT membership substantially in the coming years, as the charter cap is enlarged or eliminated altogether.

I have said that the UFT is a dues collection agency, but I was obviously wrong, since a real dues collection agency would have a better sense of self-preservation.

Cuomo and his backers from Hedgistan must be laughing among themselves when they observe the rubes from the UFT; it's no wonder that, behind their occasional condescending remarks, they think of us as chumps.

And:

These people are bought and sold. 

Weingrew thinks that the members will be mollified by a (five year late) contract - obtained while stabbing De Blasio in the back - despite the unending concessions (Common Core, APPR, VAM, charters run wild, etc) that he has made.

Are these people deluded, actually thinking they will organize charter schools? Or is something else allowing them to agree to the public school's and the union's eventual destruction?

Good question - is the UFT leadership complicit in the destruction of the union through ineptitude, delusion or deliberate collaboration?

I'll leave that question out there for now, but let's make one thing clear:

By failing to fight the charter school power grab, the UFT leadership have sowed the seeds of the destruction of traditional NYC public schools, traditional (i.e., unionized) public school teachers and by extension, the union that is supposed to represent and serve those teachers.

Cuomo Was Behind The Organization Of The Eva Moskowitz/Success Charter School Rally

There have been some stories out that it was Governor Cuomo who pushed for the charter school giveaway rally in Albany - those stories are now confirmed in the NY Times:

It was a frigid February day in Albany, and leaders of New York City’s charter school movement were anxious. They had gone to the capital to court lawmakers, but despite a boisterous showing by parents, there seemed to be little clarity about the future of their schools. 

Then, as they were preparing to head home, an intermediary called with a message: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo wanted to meet. 

To their surprise, Mr. Cuomo offered them 45 minutes of his time, in a private conference room. He told them he shared their concern about Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ambivalence toward charter schools and offered to help, according to a person who attended but did not want to be identified as having compromised the privacy of the meeting. 

In the days that followed, the governor’s interest seemed to intensify. He instructed charter advocates to organize a large rally in Albany, the person said. The advocates delivered, bringing thousands of parents and students, many of them black, Hispanic, and from low-income communities, to the capital in early March, and eclipsing a pivotal rally for Mr. de Blasio taking place at virtually the same time.

The moment proved to be a turning point, laying the groundwork for a deal reached last weekend that gave New York City charter schools some of the most sweeping protections in the nation, including a right to space inside public buildings. And interviews with state and city officials as well as education leaders make it clear that far from being a mere cheerleader, the governor was a potent force at every turn, seizing on missteps by the mayor, a fellow Democrat, and driving legislation from start to finish.

Mr. Cuomo’s office declined on Wednesday to comment on his role.

Two things to say here - I am glad to hear de Blasio's enthusiasm for his "friend", Andy Cuomo is waning these days.

Clearly Cuomo was out to stick it to de Blasio over this issue the whole time.

Second, the UFT didn't fight Cuomo's machinations here at all and is still looking for ways to endorse the anti-traditional public school, anti-union, anti-teacher Andrew Cuomo for governor.

That speaks volumes about the rot that is at the core of the United Federation of Teachers.

UFT Didn't Fight Cuomo's Charter School Giveaways

In this morning's Times analysis of how and why Cuomo pushed through so many charter school protections is this:

A lot was riding on the debate for Mr. Cuomo. A number of his largest financial backers, some of the biggest names on Wall Street, also happened to be staunch supporters of charter schools. According to campaign finance records, Mr. Cuomo’s re-election campaign has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from charter school supporters, including William A. Ackman, Carl C. Icahn, Bruce Kovner and Daniel Nir. 

Kenneth G. Langone, a founder of Home Depot who sits on a prominent charter school board, gave $50,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s campaign last year. He said that when the governor asked him to lead a group of Republicans supporting his re-election, he agreed because of Mr. Cuomo’s support for charter schools. 

“Every time I am with the governor, I talk to him about charter schools,” Mr. Langone said in an interview. “He gets it.” 

 ...

At the same time, Mr. de Blasio was struggling to move beyond the controversy. He began reaching out to supporters of charter schools on Wall Street. And at the urging of Hillary Rodham Clinton, former President Bill Clinton phoned Mr. de Blasio to offer his advice. 

In Albany, the forces that typically mobilized against charter schools were unusually subdued. The teachers’ unions and Sheldon Silver, the State Assembly speaker, were focused on winning more school aid, and Mr. de Blasio was in the midst of recalibrating his message, leaving little incentive for charter opponents to speak out. 

“There simply were not a lot of people against the charters,” said Karim Camara, a Democratic assemblyman from Brooklyn and supporter of charter schools, who introduced Mr. Cuomo at the rally in early March.

Quite simply, the UFT didn't care to take on this fight against Cuomo and the charters.

Were they bought off with promises of extra aid and tweaks to APPR?

Or did they not care enough about the damage that would be done to the system by these changes?

Hard to know the motivation for why the UFT didn't fight the charter school protections.

Just know that they didn't.

De Blasio Says He Sympathizes With Parents Opting Children Out Of State Tests

Earlier this week, Regents Chancellor Tisch attacked Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino for opting his children out of the state tests, saying he had no standards and was contributing to the decline of Western Civilization.

Mayor de Blasio, on the other hand, said he sympathizes with parent frustration over the testing regime:

“I understand their frustrations. When my children were participating in high stakes testing, I saw the same dynamics I think a lot of other parents have seen. The kids feel very nervous, they feel very overwhelmed by the process,” de Blasio said Wednesday.

...

"We are clear that we’re going to do everything in our power to move away from high stakes testing,” de Blasio said - while acknowledging that much of the testing regime is mandated by the state and federal government. “I think parents are keying into something that’s very real in terms of wanting to see a more balanced system.”

He noted his administration plans to scrap the use of tests as the sole measure to give letter grades to each school.

“A certain number of actions were taken by the previous administration that were optional, if you will, that were the choice of New York City to put more weight on high stakes tests,” he said. “We’re going to roll back a number of those actions. And I think parents who have a concern about high stakes testing are going to be reassured by that.”

Alas, with 40% of teacher evaluations coming from performance assessments and state tests, there will be lots of testing going on in NYC schools and there is little that de Blasio can do about it.

And how about De Blasio's school chancellor, Carmen Farina - where is she on opting out?

Not sounding as sympathetic as the boss:

Schools chancellor Carmen Farina said while parents have a right to opt out, they should understand it could have consequences for their kids.

“The one thing that parents need to know [is] that a lot of our middle schools still for example have admissions procedures and those admissions procedures sometimes are based on the fourth grade test,” she said. “So parents do have choices to make, but they should be aware that all changes have consequences.”

To be fair, though, Farina is nowhere as shrill over opting out as Tisch.

The sheer gall to say Astorino is "contributing to our decline".

Seriously.

I'm so old, I can remember when Merryl Tisch was defending former NYSED Commissioner Richard Mills over lower standards.

Remember that?

If you don't, you can see some of that history here.

Eva Moskowitz As Freedom Rider

Good piece by Eliza Shapiro at Capital NY on the use of civil rights rhetoric for education issues by both charter advocates (particularly Eva Moskowitz and her Success Academies) and the de Blasio administration.

Success Academies compared their pro-free charter school rent rally in Albany a few weeks ago to the freedom rides while the de Blasio administration called the universal pre-K drive a civil rights issue.

The consensus from the article?

Success Academies is off base:

Meanwhile, the civil-rights references from the Success network, led by former councilwoman Eva Moskowitz, has prompted some squirming, even within the charter movement.

One charter school activist I talked to said that the charter movement couldn't accurately compare itself to a movement marked by violence, fire hoses and police dogs, and expressed worry that charter-boosting colleagues, who were clearly winning a public-relations battle against the mayor, were wading into dangerous territory by explicitly invoking civil rights. Another said that the de Blasio administration's use of civil rights language showed that both sides were doing it, but that the analogy between advocacy for students and the fight for civil rights, in both cases, was imperfect.
A spokeswoman for Success declined to comment for this article.

But some city charter advocates privately told Capital they recognize that the rhetoric—particularly the implication that by the de Blasio administration is denying the civil rights of minority students by limiting charters—is a stretch.

Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, says the issue of universal pre-K has a more legitimate claim on the civil rights movement’s legacy than the charter cause does. He pointed to the fact that the mayor’s plan is to make pre-kindergarten available for all the city’s toddlers, while charters are, by definition, only available to some students.

“The claim on the part of the charter movement is much more far-fetched than the claim on the part of the mayor,” Baker said. “Unless you believe that Eva Moskowitz is the new Rosa Parks, which I find hard to credit.”

Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP’s New York State conference, criticized the charter network in loaded terms of her own, referring to the landmark civil rights case that desegregated the nation’s public schools: “Success’ schools have almost turned Brown [vs. Board of Education] on its head,” she said.

Read the whole piece.

Quite frankly, I'm sick of the use of civil rights rhetoric from the corporate education reformers like Moskowitz, Arne Duncan, Joel Klein et al.

And considering how many charter schools are almost wholly segregated by race, it's beyond a stretch to claim they are analogous to the freedom rides, demonstrations, protests and sit-in's of the Civil Rights Era.

Don't Accept Minor Tweaks To APPR Teacher Evaluations

Andrew Cuomo issued a statement yesterday saying he and the legislature will revisit the APPR teacher evaluation component that is tied to Common Core tests now that the CCSS tests have been de-linked from high stakes for children for a couple of years.

There was much surprise around the Internets and the Twitterverse and not a few "What is this, April Fools?" comments.

And why not - Cuomo has resisted any changes to APPR, even threatening the Board of Regents when they suggested making very minor changes to the system a couple of months ago.

So why did Cuomo make this announcement about impending APPR changes yesterday?

Perhaps the Rob Astorino opt out video spooked him and his advisers and pushed them to announce some nebulous future change to teacher evaluations.

Perhaps there was some deal made with the teachers unions and/or Shelly Silver to announce tweaks to APPR if they didn't fight the charter school protections Cuomo wanted enshrined in the budget.

In any case, it doesn't matter the reason, it doesn't even matter the words Cuomo used in announcing potential future changes to APPR - what really matters is what changes get made.

As one commenter here at Perdido Street School blog noted:

Unless Cuomo withdraws from Race to the Top, there will still be tests tied to teacher evaluations. I do not see Cuomo dropping from Race to the Top anytime soon.

In addition, Cuomo still wants to hawk his APPR teacher evaluation system as one of the major accomplishments of his first term as governor when he runs for re-election this year, so I don't see him allowing any meaningful changes to APPR to make it into law.

If anything, this is another jive head fake from Cuomo, like the Cuomo Common Core panel he announced a few months back, the one he said would look into the CCSS implementation and make some adjustments.

If you remember, he loaded that CCSS panel up with Common Core shills and proponents, then had them ignore the one member of the panel who disagreed with the panel's findings and issue a "unanimous" report on how swell the Common Core is.

I would expect similar machinations here from Sheriff Andy - there's nothing in the statements he made or the circumstances he is facing over APPR or CCSS yet that make me think otherwise.

Now if we get closer to Election Day and Cuomo suddenly starts to see a close race and the pollsters blame some of that close race on parents and teachers either ditching Andy for his opponent, Rob Astorino, or just ditching him and not voting at all, then you might see some REAL change to APPR and the Cuomo/Regents/NYSED reform agenda.

For now what you're seeing is a head fake on APPR, as you saw a head fake on Common Core from Cuomo these past few months.

And I dunno about you, but a head fake on APPR is not good enough for me.

Neither are tweaks to the system.

Cuomo is playing games, folks, and I am not in the mood for games.

I sense the same from many of you out there.

Let us not accept minor tweaks to APPR made out of political expediency by Sheriff Andy Cuomo.

Cuomo Says Teacher Evaluations Tied To Common Core Tests Need To Be "Addressed"

Maybe he's sick of twisting himself into a pretzel trying to defend no stakes for children on the CCSS state tests for the next two years while teachers have 20% of their evaluations based upon these same test scores and can potentially lose their jobs if the scores are low enough?

When the state Board of Regents in February proposed a plan to allow teachers to use the highly criticized rollout of the Common Core when challenging their evaluations, Gov. Andrew Cuomo knocked the proposal as "another in the series of missteps" by the state's education overseers.

On Tuesday, Cuomo said the state needs to take action related to teacher evaluations, and that he and lawmakers will be discussing it before the legislative session wraps up in June.

"We have to deal with the issue of the effect of Common Core testing on teacher evaluations," Cuomo said at a news conference Tuesday.

...

"If you said Common Core testing was premature for students and you just halted the grades on the transcript, then what is your opinion about the impact of Common Core testing on teacher evaluations and what should be done?" Cuomo said. "That is an issue that we have not addressed and we need to address before the end of the session, in my opinion, depending on what happens."

Quite frankly, I'm still not sure this isn't some April Fools joke on Sheriff Andy's part.

I mean, he literally threatened a two centuries old education institution like the Board of Regents when they mentioned making minor tweaks to his APPR teacher evaluation system a couple of months ago.

Now he's saying this is an issue that needs to be addressed?

Hard to believe him.

Most likely he's uttering some empty rhetoric here, and whatever changes they end up proposing and passing will be as ineffectual as the so-called Common Core moratorium in the budget deal.

Look How Common Core Gets Characterized In Mainstream Media Political Accounts These Days

From John Dickerson's Slate column on why Jeb Bush may have trouble running for president:

The final problem is that Bush has taken policy stances against his party’s grass roots on the hot button issues of immigration and education. Bush is an advocate for pathways to citizenship and residency for illegal immigrants, positions that House Republican leaders didn’t even want to debate in this election year for fear they would cause too big a rift in the ranks. Bush is also an advocate for Common Core education standards, which advocates like Bill Gates say are designed to make the United States more competitive in the world. Grass-roots conservatives are passionately opposed to the standards, arguing that they remove local control of education and dumb down teaching of crucial subjects like math. In Indiana, activists have just convinced GOP Gov. Mike Pence to withdraw the state from Common Core.

Notice how the CCSS are characterized in the Dickerson piece - standards which "advocates like Bill Gates say are designed to make the United States more competitive in the world."

Opponents, on the other hand, "are passionately opposed to the standards, arguing that they remove local control of education and dumb down teaching of crucial subjects like math."

Remember when mainstream media journalists like John Dickerson used to copy and paste the boilerplate description of the Common Core State (sic) Standards from proponents like Corestandards.org?

The Common Core is a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy (ELA). These learning goals outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each grade. The standards were created to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live.

Not anymore - now we're getting this into the description:

Grass-roots conservatives are passionately opposed to the standards, arguing that they remove local control of education and dumb down teaching of crucial subjects like math.

No wonder Common Core proponents are getting so shrill in their attacks against CCSS critics and opponents.

When even mainstream media figures like Dickerson frame the CCSS as something that advocates "say" will make the U.S. more competitive but opponents "argue" that the standards are dumbing down America and handing over control of the nation's schools to the feds, you know they have lost control of their message.

And as any student of politics can tell you, it isn't long after you lose control of the message that you lose the war.

Opt Out Movement Grows In NY State

No wonder education reformers like Merryl Tisch and StudentsFirstNY were so shrill in their criticism of Westchester County Executive/GOP gubernatorial's announcement that he and his wife were opting their children out of the state's Common Core ELA and math tests that begin today.

Astorino and his wife are just two out of thousands of parents across New York who are opting their children out of the state tests this.

Here is how Carol Burris described the burgeoning opt-out movement in today's Washington Post:

Even before the tests begin, “Opt Out” is catching fire across the state. Stacey Sturdy has been lobbying her legislators to change the course of testing and reform. She created a grassroots group in her small district of Worchester in rural Otsego County. On the Sunday prior to testing, 25 percent of 3-8 students’ parents had decided to opt out in her district. Stacey said, “My husband and I decided early on that our children would be refusing the test, as a last ditch effort to show our governor and Commissioner King that parents are the ultimate voice for public education. We will not stand by and watch our beautiful rural school be corrupted by indoctrinating, age-inappropriate curriculum; then set up for failure just so a charter school can take its place.” Stacey has also decided to run for the school board to continue to make a difference.

On suburban Long Island, the home of the 16,000-member group known as Long Island Opt Out, founder Jeanette Deutermann struggled the day before the testing began to keep up with the reported numbers of students opting out. Some districts were reporting numbers well in excess of one-third of all potential test takers, with more letters continuing to arrive in school offices. By the end of Monday, with 65 of the 122 Long Island districts reporting through volunteers, Jeanette was aware of more than 8,850 opt-out requests in those 65 districts. More requests are expected to arrive on Tuesday and it is likely that this year, as last year, test takers will also pull out of tests once they begin.

The NY State legislature did little to address parent concerns in the budget agreement that was passed last night and will be signed by Governor Cuomo today.

And so, as one parent puts it in the Burris piece, opponents of the state education reform agenda are doing what they can do to fight back:

 It has become clear that in New York state, the “canary in the coal mine” of the Common Core reforms, parents are sending a clear message by opting out. In the words of Seaford, N.Y parent, Heather Umhafer: “This is a democracy. However the democratic process was left out when it came to the Common Core. We are fighting back. It’s the only way and we do it by ‘choosing to refuse’ and ‘remember in November.’”

We're seeing straw man attacks against Astorino for opting his kids out of the tests, with Regents Chancellor Tisch claiming Astorino is against all education standards.

Those straw man attacks aren't just aimed at him, of course - they're aimed at all parents who dare to stand up for local control of education, for a parent's right to have a say in what goes on in their taxpayer-funded schools.

The shriller the attacks against parents who opt their children out of the state tests or criticize the Common Core agenda are, the more you know the opposition to the NYSED/Regents/Cuomo reform agenda is scaring the education reform establishment.

This opt-out movement positively terrifies them.

They know as soon as other parents see that there is nothing the state can do to parents and children who opt out of the state tests, the opt-out movement will spread like wildfire.

Eac year over the past few years, the movement has grown.

This year looks to be the biggest year yet.

And with Cuomo and the state legislature doubling down on CCSS reform in the budget, the movement against Endless Testing is going to grow and grow.

Chancellor Tisch Attacks Rob Astorino For Opting His Children Out Of State Tests

Yesterday the Cuomo Campaign sent State Senator George Latimer out to attack Westchester County Executive and GOP gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino for announcing that he and his wife were joining with thousands of other parents around the state and opting their children out of the Common Core state tests starting today.

Today the Daily News reports that Regents Chancellor Tisch launched an attack against Astorino as well:

Astorino's pronouncement pulled immediate criticism from state Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, who told the Daily News in an email, "If you are against standards, you are contributing to our decline."

As is usual with education deformers, Tisch sets up a straw man argument here, equating Astorino's opposition to the Common Core State (sic) Standards with opposition to ALL standards, which is most definitely not what Astorino said in the video.

Watch for yourself:





Astorino very clearly states that we don't need lower standards in our schools, we need higher standards.

Astorino also clearly states that "many experts now agree that Cuomo's Common Core may actually lower standards for our school children over time" and points to the problems with "Common Core math for our younger children," which "wasn't developed properly."

He then tells a story of his children having trouble with their Common Core math homework and he and his wife having trouble helping them because "Common Core math methods left us all scratching our heads."

These criticisms of Common Core are widespread across the country - just google "Common Core" and "math" and see what comes up.

Chancellor Tisch may think creating a straw man argument for the Astorino opt out problem (Astorino doesn't want standards in schools) and knocking it down (he's contributing to the decline of this country with his opposition to the Common Core) will be an effective way to defuse it.

She is wrong.

Her dishonest and deceitful method of pushback will do nothing but fan the flames of the opposition against the Common Core, the Common Core tests, and the rest of the NYSED/Regents/Cuomo reform agenda.

This has been a problem with deformers since the beginning of the CCSS pushback.

Rather than honestly deal with the criticism of the CCSS, they have created straw man arguments about the opposition or tried to marginalize critics as wackos and crazies.

But as we can see from the burgeoning opt out movement, the growing opposition to the Common Core, and the anger aimed at the education reform movement, that deformer pushback strategy is failing miserably.

The deformer attacks against the opposition are getting shriller and shriller and it speaks to the desperation they're feeling over the impending demise of the education reform agenda they worked so hard to shove down the throats of America.