NYSAPE To Cuomo: New York Parents Are Not Fools - YOU Are The Problem

If Cuomo thought his little Common Core Review shenanigan was going to dial down the heat from parent activists over Common Core, the Endless Testing regime and his APPR teacher evaluation system, he was wrong:

In a press release yesterday expressing “sympathy” for parents, Cuomo called for a review of the Common Core in New York, blaming the State Education Department’s implementation while vowing to revive his Common Core panel to review the mess.

Parents across the state are not fools.

They know the problems are hardly limited to implementation of the Common Core, but the actual Common Core itself, its excessive testing, and a fundamentally broken teacher evaluation system.

Parents know that Andrew Cuomo is not part of the solution. Cuomo is the problem.

It is Cuomo who forced his unproven teacher evaluation system down parents’ throats.

It is Cuomo who slashed and underfunded the State Education Department staffing.

It is Cuomo who accepted ‘Big Donor’ campaign money and enabled the build-up of a privatized, unaccountable shadow government within the State Education Department –The Regents Research Fellows—who created the “Implementation” mess Cuomo now blames.

It is Cuomo who repeatedly tramples on the New York State Constitution–which gives a NY Governor NO authority over education policy—with his serial habit of forming pro-corporate education reform stacked panels, complete with Washington lobbyists salivating to eliminate parental consent for data profiling of children.

Parents of New York are outraged and will continue the fight to take back their schools and classrooms from the Albany shenanigans of Andrew Cuomo, Merryl Tisch and MaryEllen Elia.

Cuomo's impaneling a commission from the same pre-existing education reform commission that acted as a rubber stamp for his policies in 2014.

Parents and teachers know this is nothing more than a sham PR move to help Cuomo distance himself from his own education reform policies.

But he cannot - they are his.

He shoved APPR based upon Common Core testing into the budget last April, he supports Common Core and the Endless Testing regime, he's looking for some diversionary tactic to fool people into thinking he's changing the reform agenda in New York.

But parents are not fools, nor are teachers - there will be no substantive changes this time around anymore than there were the last time.

Cuomo is the problem and no sham commission will erase that fact.

Your move, governor.