Cuomo To Focus On Closing "Failing" Schools This Year

From the Politico NY morning email update:

"On education, we have failing schools in this state, today, where we have over 100,000 students in schools that we call "failing" schools. Failing schools are schools that don't reach the basic minimum requirement by SED, the State Education Department, and many of these failing schools have been failing for over 10 years, believe it or not. And the system, the bureaucracy, has been too tolerant, in my opinion. And we are - we're going to be focusing on the closing schools, we're going to be investing in the school system to make sure we're doing everything we can on the state side. So we're going to have a very robust agenda and then the progressive government side that is very important to me." http://bit.ly/1NZjXzv

I can't think of anything more progressive than closing public schools and turning them over to charter operators funded by hedge fund managers.

What The Clinton Shills Don't Get: Few Trust Hillary Clinton

Had some fun on Twitter with a Clinton shill calling me a liar for this post here entitled "Hillary Clinton Vows To Close Every Public School In The Country."

His message was basically the same one that I've seen elsewhere on the Internet as the "Clinton Wants To Destroy Public Education" meme has rolled along and Clinton shills have begun to push back on it - Clinton doesn't want to close all the schools that are rated "below average," as she said wanted to in the Iowa clip, she simply misspoke.

But the thing that Clinton shills and apologists don't get here is this - given Clinton's elasticity with truth and honesty, given her past fondness for school closures, DFER, charter schools, and the Common Core, given the fondness her pals at the Center for American Progress (basically a Clinton administration in exile ready to roll into power as soon as she's elected) have for this same stuff, given her shillery for Walmart in the past and given the fact that she's a Clinton and no one believes a word these people say, it doesn't matter what she really meant.

See, couple the Clinton administration's ed deform policies in the past with the betrayal that many felt when Barack Obama doubled down on the Bush ed deform policies of NCLB with his Race to the Top program and you have an entire generation of teachers out there not going to cut these lying politicians any slack when they "misspeak" or say stuff that sounds kooky (as Clinton did.)

The larger issue here for me, and why I even blogged the thing in the first place (if you notice, it's almost all Cuomo/NY all the time here at Perdido Street School blog these days, so I'm not doing much 2016 presidential race stuff) is that it was the perfect crystallization of the mistrust many teachers have for Democratic politicians in general and Clinton in particular.

That people didn't give her the benefit of the doubt over this "misspeak," that even now she needs the shills to go around defending her, goes to show you just how little trust or affection she has among many rank and file educators these days.

How do you know when a Clinton's lying?

You don't have to try and figure it out because they're ALWAYS lying.

NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia Says Money Not The Issue For Struggling Schools

NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia continued her "I'm Not Listening To You" tour today, showing some "tough love" for administrators and officials of struggling schools: 

New state Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia met with school adminstrators from around the state Wednesday who had gathered to discuss the new and controversial receivership program that raises the possibility that some of the state’s lowest-performing schools could end up being taken out of local district control and turned over to groups like non-profits or charter operators.

Her remarks to the at-times skeptical local officials were part pep talk and part tough love.

...

Responding to the oft-voiced complaint that the state’s poor performing schools need more money, she said that she didn’t devise the funding formulas and that school improvement is about more than dollars and cents.

“Money is not the whole deal here,” she said, adding that schools need to look at, tap and coordinate all of the resources in their community including volunteer groups and others not formally part of the education system.

“There have been millions of dollars put into these schools and they are still on that list,” she said of the lowest performing schools, which are dubbed ”struggling” or “persistently struggling.”

Elia may not have devised the funding formulas for school districts but that doesn't mean they're not a huge problem.

Take this 2010 study by Rutgers about school funding in New York:

New York State ranks near the bottom of the country in how fairly it funds its schools, asserts a new Rutgers University report released Tuesday.

Only four other states have a bigger gap between how much money they send to their poorest schools compared with their wealthiest ones, researchers at Rutgers and the Education Law Center in New Jersey found.

"It really gives us pause," said Geri Palast, head of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the group that filed a successful lawsuit in the 1990s to force the state to fund poor schools more equitably.
New York spends more on education overall than most other states, but researchers call its funding methods "regressive."

Wealthy districts rely on high property taxes to fund their schools - a luxury many poor districts do not have.

As a result, in 2008, a New York school district with no poor kids received about $17,000 per student in local and state aid, while one with at least 30% of the students living in poverty got about $14,000 per student.

 Or this more recent report from January 2015:

ALBANY — In the opening salvo of what promises to be a heated battle this year over education reform, a new report says funding inequities between poor and rich school districts across the state has reached record levels under Gov. Cuomo - and has soared 43% in New York City.

Overall, schools in poorer districts spent $8,733 per pupil less in 2012 than those from wealthier ones, an inequity that grew by nearly 9% from before Cuomo took office in 2011, according to the study by a coalition of education advocacy groups opposing many of the reforms pushed by Cuomo.

While the 100 wealthiest districts spent on average more than $28,000 in state and local funding per kid in 2012, the 100 poorest districts in the state spent closer to $20,000 per student, the report found.

The report, obtained by the Daily News, is set to be released Monday. The coalition includes the Alliance for Quality Education, which is backed by the powerful teachers unions, the Public Policy and Education Fund of New York, Opportunity Action, and National Opportunity to Learn.

...


The inequity gaps were made worse by nearly $400 per pupil, the report says, after Cuomo won a 2% cap on local property tax increases that made it more difficult for needy districts to raise needed money, the report says.

...

The inequality has made it tougher to attack poor education results in high-need districts, where graduation rates dramatically lag behind those in richer districts, the report says.

But MaryEllen Elia says money isn't the issue with struggling schools.

You know, all the problems can be solved with a little tough love, some volunteers from the community and the firing of entire school staffs.

Hey, NYSUT, how's that collaboration and consensus thing going with MaryEllen Elia?

Heastie Doesn't Get It: Testing Issue Not Just About Hours Spent On Testing

From State of Politics:

The response to the large number of students opting out of the most recent round of standardized tests be may be a “macro look” at the number of hours spent on examinations, Speaker Carl Heastie on Monday said.

“It is a concern for all of us with a huge number of students opting out,” Heastie told reporters.

...

Heastie said the numbers will likely spur lawmakers in Albany to take a broader look at the issue of testing in the classroom.

“We do have to take a real macro look at this,” he said.

It's not about how much time is spent on testing.

It's about the stakes that are attached to the testing.

So long as the stakes are schools get closed and teachers get fired based upon test scores, there will be test-driven classrooms and schools that dominate everything else.

That's the "macro look" at testing.

Cuomo Says Closing Schools Is As Important As Closing Prisons

No, seriously:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo received an award on Sunday evening lauding him for his successful efforts to close 13 prisons across the state.

Cuomo called the prison closures — which he first started in 2011 — a “prouder accomplishment I can’t have.”

...

In a brief speech accepting the award, Cuomo tied the effort to reform the state’s prison system to a broader effort not just to overhaul the state’s criminal justice system, but also his push to overhaul educating in New York.

“We have failing public schools in this state that we know we have been failing for 10 years and we continue to send students to failing public schools,” Cuomo said. “A school in a poor community has a different set of issues than a school in a richer school districts. Recognize that a school is more than a school, get the mentoring, pay for the tutoring, get the health assistance they need because a school is more than a school.”

I'm rarely rendered speechless by something a politician does or says, but here's once when I am.

I mean, how do you react to a politician, accepting an award for closing prisons, pivoting from that award to push for school closures too?

Cuomo Goes Public With Details Of His Plan To "Break" The Public School Monopoly

From Capital Confidential:

The Cuomo administration has sent a letter to Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and outgoing-Education Commissioner John King outlining the governor’s intention to make teacher reforms a top priority.

The letter from State Operations Director Jim Malatras also seems to bolster Cuomo’s controversial campaign season comments that he’d like to break up one of the last remaining public monopolies: public education.

“Several weeks ago Governor Cuomo said that improving education is thwarted by the monopoly of the education bureaucracy,” Malatras writes. “The education bureaucracy’s mission is to sustain the bureaucracy and the status quo and therefore it is often the enemy of change. The result is the current system perpetuates the bureaucracy, but fails our students in many ways.”

The monopoly busting plan is addressing the questions outlined in the letter, which include those about how the state’s current teacher evaluation is credible, how the administration would address the problem of removing poor-performing teachers and what Cuomo’s vision for charter schools is.

Here are some of the areas Cuomo suggests could see so-called reform or push in the next legislative season:

1. The evaluation system
2. The 3020a disciplinary process
3. The ATR pool in NYC
4. Teacher certification
5. Probationary period for teachers
6. Making it easy to close schools
7. Increase in charter schools, especially in NYC
8. Adding more technology to the system, including online classes
9. Consolidating districts
10. Reforming the Regents appontment process
11. Making the hiring of NYSED Commissioner King's replacement transparent

I'll have more later on this.

But suffice to say, there's a lot here that Cuomo says he wants to tackle.

Does he have the political juice to pull this kind of agenda off?

This is the kind of agenda you see from a governor with an 80% approval rating (like he had in the first term), not a governor who won re-election with the lowest totals of anyone since FDR.

So he can be beaten on a lot of this if the union leaders at the AFT, UFT and NYSUT actually decide to fight him.

But will they?

Regents Chancellor Tisch Looks To Turn Page On The "Dr" Ted Morris Mess By Smacking De Blasio Over Charter Renewals

As we know from past experience with the "Dr" Ted Morris mess, literally anybody can get a charter school here in New York State.

So it's interesting when we see Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and the rest of her merry men and women on the Board of Regents publicly smack Bill de Blasio and Carmen Farina over charter school renewals:

The Board of Regents refused Monday to issue renewals to six under-performing New York City charter schools and asked Chancellor Carmen Fariña to Albany to explain why the city bothered to send up their applications.

The city had asked the Regents to extend two charters through June 2017 and four others through June 2018, instead of the typical five-year period.

But the Regents questioned whether the schools, which fell below the average on state tests last year, could ever make the grade.

“I wouldn’t vote to keep most of these school open,” said Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, according to a Chalkbeat report.

Fariña was invited to the next Regents meeting in January to explain why the city backed the schools.

Make no mistake, Tisch and the Regents want to look "tough" on charters as Cuomo and the Regents prepare their "aggressive" charter expansion agenda for the next legislative session, so it's not hard to get cynical over Tisch's public smack down of Farina and De Blasio over these six charter renewals.

I dunno why De Blasio decided to renew the charters, although NY reporter Lindsey Crist raised a good point:

@NYDNBenChapman @perdidostschool @GDeckernews @joshgreenman I'm serious! They said they wouldn't close schools for low performance right now
— Lindsey Christ (@LindseyChrist) December 15, 2014

@NYDNBenChapman @perdidostschool @GDeckernews @joshgreenman Or is this just what "a moratorium on school closures" looks like?
— Lindsey Christ (@LindseyChrist) December 15, 2014

I had a little more cynical take:

@LindseyChrist @NYDNBenChapman @GDeckernews @joshgreenman How much of this is fallout from de Blasio's loss to Eva?
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) December 15, 2014

@LindseyChrist @NYDNBenChapman @GDeckernews @joshgreenman I bet they remember $5 mil in anti-BdB ads, plummeting polls
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) December 15, 2014

@LindseyChrist @NYDNBenChapman @GDeckernews @joshgreenman Are they overcompensating the other way now?
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) December 15, 2014

In any case, I think you cannot underestimate the cynicism of Merryl Tisch here.

It's not a mistake that she publicly admonishes Farina and de Blasio over these renewals in the weeks after NYSED and the Regents handed a con man a charter school in Rochester.

Nothing like getting "tough" in the latest battle to make the memory of a former one go away. 

Daily News Praises Merryl Tisch For School Closure Threats Even As She Fails To Take Responsibility For Ted Morris Fiasco

Daily News today:

New York’s top education official has sent a timely shot across the city’s bow — warning that school renewal plans unveiled by Mayor de Blasio may well fall short of the genuine accountability the state has every right to demand.

Cheers to Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch for clarifying that kids will never be rescued from failing schools if the worst teachers remain in their classrooms.

...

 In stepped Tisch, saying bluntly that “if we do not see movement with these lowest-performing schools in terms of their ability to retool their workforces by the spring” — that’s this spring — “we will move to close them.”

These schools, Tisch said correctly, “have failed for generations now.”

“It’s not just saying, ‘We’re gonna fix these schools,’ ” she said. “You’ve got to give the new principals and assistant principals the ability to hire the teachers that they want and fire the teachers that they don’t want.”

Ah, yes - Tisch is happy to tell Mayor de Blasio to close public schools and fire the teachers in those schools or she'll step in as a state entity and do it for him.

Meanwhile, she shirks blame for the "Dr." Ted Morris Jr. mess, passing the buck onto the local Regents and NYSED for the state's approval of a charter school with a lead applicant who lied about having a BA, an MA, a Ph.D, an MSW and starting three non-profits since he was ten years old.

Mercedes Schneider wrote a scathing post last night that exposes the lack of due diligence that the state did on this charter application and notes that both the Regents Chancellor and the current lieutenant governor, Robert Duffy, are making excuses for why Morris, the con man, got a charter.

She finishes her post with this:

For at least three years– 2012, 2013, and 2014– Morris has been misrepresenting himself to NYSED and, by extension, to Regents and the citizens of Rochester.

He clearly meant to do so.

Others found him out; otherwise, it is almost certain Morris would have continued in his lies.
Morris has been exposed– and with him both NYSED’s and Regents’ failure to properly investigate the charters they have approved.

Time to step up, Tisch:

At least ask to see evidence of NYSED’s having verified lead applicant credentials before stamping your “aggressive” approval.

The Daily News of course ignores the whole Morris fiasco because it doesn't play into their "Tisch is the adult in the room" frame for the closure threat story.

Tisch's refusal to take responsibility for the Morris fiasco, her passing the buck onto the local Regents and NYSED for handing a fraudster a charter school, shows she is NOT the adult in the room, that she only pushes her authority as chancellor when it suits her agenda.

As a pro-charter, anti-public school reformer, Tisch isn't interested in holding Ted Morris, Greater Works Charter School, NYSED, the local Regents, herself or the charter approval process accountable for the Morris mess.

She is, however, happy to hold Mayor de Blasio, Chancellor Farina and the teachers in NYC schools accountable for "improvement" of performance by spring or she's going to step in and force closure of some schools.

Apparently only unionized teachers and their schools are to be held accountable in Merryl Tisch's New York.

What Happened To Mayoral Control Of NYC Schools?

Funny how when a pro-school privatization mayor was in power in NYC, the corporatists were all in favor of mayoral control of NYC schools, but now that a mayor less aligned with the privatization movement is in power, the corporatists are doing everything they can to undercut it.

First the charter school criminals/entrepreneurs got Governor Cuomo, their favored donation target, to force NYC to either find space for every charter school in a NYC school building or pay rent for said charter school in private space.

So far, the city is on the hook for a few million dollars for two charters owned by charter school criminal Eva Moskowitz, but that tab will rise over the next few years as more and more charters spring up.

With charter school criminals looking to have the charter cap completely eliminated in the next legislative session, it is quite possible we will see charters grow cancerously all across the city and stamp out what is left of the public school system.

Now we have Regents Chancellor Tisch further undercutting mayoral control by issuing a threat to close 94 city schools by spring if they do not show improvement - even though de Blasio has only been in power for less than a year and his improvement plan just was announced this month.

That threat from Tisch is clearly meant to humiliate the mayor and undercut his power as steward of the city school system.

If the mayor no longer has the power to place or not place schools in his own city, no longer has the power to keep schools open if the state wants to close them, then mayoral control has been effectively destroyed by the state.

It will be interesting to see if de Blasio stands up to the state in this showdown.

He tried standing up to the charter school criminals last spring in the Eva/de Blasio Showdown, but found not one ally willing to back him in the fight as the charter school criminals spent $5 million in ads to vilify him on TV.

Even the UFT was MIA during that time.

Unless de Blasio is publicly backed by supporters of the public school system - including the unions - I'd say the chances of him standing up to the state are not very good.

After the beating he took over the Eva Showdown, he would be crazy to do otherwise.

So, UFT and AFT, where are you now that your beloved mayoral control is under attack?

Regents Chancellor Tisch Threatens To Close 94 City Schools Unless Teachers At Those Schools Are Fired

Here's how the NY Post reported Regents Chancellor Tisch's threat to override mayoral control of the city school system and close "failing" schools:

The head of the state’s Board of Regents vowed Sunday to shut down the city’s worst schools if they do not shape up.

Chancellor Merryl Tisch said that 94 of the city’s lowest-performing schools — which Mayor de Blasio has vowed to fix — will be shuttered by this spring if they aren’t fixed by the city.

“From the state’s perspective, if we do not see movement with these lowest-performing schools in terms of their ability to retool their workforces by the spring, we will move to close them,” Tisch told John Catsimatidis on his AM 970 radio show.

“These are the schools that have failed for generations now.”

... 

De Blasio last week announced his School Renewal Program, a sweeping plan to spend $150 million to help fix those low-performing schools — but Tisch said the “devil is in the details.”

“It depends upon what they do with the money,” Tisch said. “There needs to be the capacity to manage how and where we place our teachers.”

The main issue, according to Tisch, is that the principals need leverage to fire educators if they don’t meet standards.

“It’s not just saying, ‘We’re gonna fix these schools,’” she said. “You gotta give the new principals and assistant principals the ability to hire the teachers that they want and fire the teachers that they don’t want.”

You cannot get more direct or stark than the threat issued by Tisch on Sunday:

Teachers from those 94 schools MUST be fired or I will move to close them.

So much for mayoral control, eh?

Raging Horse described the latest salvo against schools and teachers this way:

Tisch, in short, seems to be saying that the state will do what it will, regardless of the plans of Mayor Bill de Blasio or the will of the people who voted him into office. In fact, like Cuomo’s reckless giveaway to charter schools, Tisch’s words seem calculated to humiliate de Blasio and to crush the political will of the city with the power of the state.

That and, of course, demonize teachers while praising the miracle of charter schools.

...

What I do know is this: These relentless attacks are exhausting and debilitating and are the exact opposite of what one would be doing if one had any intention whatsoever of allowing a flourishing school system. I know this too: when the power of a state is allowed to crush the political will of a city we have moved even further into a horrifying new American darkness.

Indeed, the attacks never stop.

Get rid of Bloomberg - on comes Cuomo vowing to destroy the public school monopoly and Tisch vowing to close 94 schools in NYC regardless of the policy of the mayor (who ostensibily has "control" over the school system.)

We are indeed living in dangerous times when a plutocrat like Tisch - whose family made part of their money by selling death to children in the form of Newport cigarettes (I know - I used to smoke them when Tisch owned them) - or a functionary of the plutocrats like Cuomo get to impose their will on the City of New York no matter what the elected mayor or the people who elected him want.

Welcome to the Corporatist America - the corporatists will stomp out the school system no matter what.

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch Looks To Circumvent Mayoral Control, Force School Closings

Diane Ravitch:

Recently Mayor Bill DeBlasio and Chancellor Carmen Farina announced a plan to help struggling schools by providing extra tutoring, after-school programs, and other needed resources. They made clear that they wanted to support schools with low test scores instead of closing them. The mayor said he would invest $150 million in extra resources to the lowest performing schools.

However, Merryl Tisch, the chancellor of the state Board of Regents, said on a radio show that if the schools didn’t show progress by this coming spring,  she would move to close them and replace them with charter schools. The Tisch family, in addition to being generous philanthropists, are big supporters of charter schools.

Giving the DeBlasio plan only a few months to prove its success seems awfully unfair. Schools don’t get “turned around” in a few months. Surely Tisch knows that.

Indeed she does - but this is all about the power to fire teachers and close schools, as Tisch made clear in her statements.

So she doesn't actually care whether the de Blasio plan has enough time to succeed or not.

All Merryl Tisch cares about is making sure there is a precedent to break the teachers contract by giving the principals of these "failing" schools the power to fire teachers.

This isn't a fight over education or what's best for the kids.

It's a labor battle, with Tisch looking to help the privatizers by enshrining the right to fire teachers regardless of the contract between the district and the union.

So she's giving until spring for the de Blasio plan to show "progress."

It's November 17.

In short, Tisch has rigged it so that the plan cannot show "progress" and then she will move to have the schools closed and the teachers fired regardless of "mayoral control."

It's amazing how the reformers loved mayoral control when they had a mayor looking to destroy the system in power.

Now that there's a mayor who's a little less trigger happy about closing schools, they're going to circumvent mayoral control.

Funny how that goes.

Daily News Wants "Death Penalty" For Schools Too

They applaud Governor Cuomo for saying "failing" schools deserve the death penalty, then point to a Bloomberg Philanthropy- and Gates Foundation-funded research group study that pats the Bloomberg administration on the back for its school closure policies, replacing large schools with smaller ones.

See here for how MDRC works is funded by Bloomberg Philanthropy even as it works in concert with the Bloomberg administration on various free marketeer social programs.

The study the Daily News is pointing to was funded by the Gates Foundation - which of course pushes small schools to replace large schools

Gotta love a Bloomberg-funded research group that pats the Bloomberg administration on the back for its education policies.

Gotta love even more when the Daily News uses this Bloomberg-funded research group's Bloomberg-and Gates Foundation-funded school closure study as proof positive why the Bloomberg closure policies ought to continue without acknowledging where this research group gets its money from - namely Bloomberg Philanthropy and the Gates Foundation.

Cuomo Plans To Attack "Failing" Schools And School Districts in 2013-2014

He's ratcheting up the "death penalty" rhetoric for schools:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Thursday that he intends to put an end to the status quo when it comes to New York’s failing schools. Far from backing away from his recent comments calling for a “death penalty” for these schools, the governor said he intends to set benchmarks and consequences for schools – and school districts – when they don’t give students the education the students deserve.

“What I’m saying on education is, failing schools are not acceptable. Period. It has to end, and it has to end now,” he said in a meeting with The Buffalo News Editorial Board. “Our society’s willingness to perpetuate this situation is no longer acceptable. We need dramatic action, and it’s going to come to a head.”

Improvement models for failing schools might include a range of options, including restructuring poor schools as holistic “community schools” or having charter schools take over, he said. If an entire district is failing, the possibility of mayoral takeovers or state takeovers might exist, he said.

Interestingly enough, he seems to actually know that what schools in poor communities do is more than just, you know, function as schools:

Of the many options for changing failing New York schools, Cuomo spent the most time describing a “community school” concept, which would apply to schools serving children in poor neighborhoods.

“A school in a poor community is really not a school,” he said, “and to compare a school in a poor community to a school in a rich community – that analysis is bogus, because the school in a poor community is trying to do many more things than a school in a rich community.”

Society needs to acknowledge that schools filled with poor students serve different functions, Cuomo said, and are more of a cross between an educational institution and a community center that serves both social service and educational needs.

“In a rich community, you have the parents, you have the after-school care, you have a healthy home,” he said. “The school in a poor community is a school, a mentor, a nutritionist, a counselor. ... You have students where it’s not just an education problem. Then don’t call it an education problem, and don’t expect the teacher in a school to be able to wear seven hats with no money and no training and no resources.

“I call that community schools. That’s an alternative.”

Of course, as he adds more and more mandates to districts, as school are forced to spend more and more money on evaluations and testing and the like, they have less money to spend on social services and the wrap around support needed to help students succeed.

Is Cuomo aware of this?

He's many things, but he is not a stupid man.

I am sure he is aware of this.

In fact, I would bet it's part of his privatization plan - overburden districts with mandates, starve them of funding, force them to "fail," declare them "failing," take away democratic control of the district from an elected school board and put all the power into the hands of a mayor (or the state via takeover), shut down the schools, fire the teachers, reopen the schools as charters with a burn and churn teacher employment philosophy, hire non-unionized teachers, and enrich his charter school/hedge fundie buddies.

That's the plan Cuomo's got going.

Will he get away with it?

Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

There is Cuomo fatigue in Albany that has begun to set in.

His "reform agenda" is not a foregone conclusion.

One final thing from this article - Cuomo seems blissfully unaware of the insanity that is APPR.

He thinks it's a good, data-driven teacher evaluation system.

Andrew Cuomo Declares War Against Public School Teachers

Why did Andrew Cuomo say he believes "failing" public schools deserve "the death penalty"?

At first, when I read on the Internet that Cuomo had this, I thought the writer meant he said something close to it in a hyperbolic way.

But no, Governor Cuomo actually said it:

“There is going to be have to be a death penalty for failing schools . . . where we say the children come first, before the bureaucracy,” Cuomo told reporters during a stop in suburban Buffalo late Thursday. “If the school fails, the school has to end.”

Cuomo said options for failing schools include a takeover by the state or a takeover by a charter school.

“I don’t want Albany to sit there and tell communities how to run their schools but I do feel comfortable sitting in Albany and saying failing schools is not an option,” Cuomo said.

Such an interesting phrase to use - "death penalty" - when talking about schools.

Why not ""failing schools deserve to be closed"?

Or "failing schools cannot be allowed to continue to fail"?

I would take issue with the simplicity of those statements, since there are many reasons why schools "fail" that often have nothing to do with the schools or the teachers teaching there.

But at least the language would be less inflammatory.

To say that "failing" schools deserve "the death penalty" amounts to a declaration of war by this governor against public schools and public school teachers.

Folks, he wants to exterminate some of us.

Seriously - just look at the language he used.

Language always gives you away and the language Little Andy chose here gives him away as a  pro-charter, pro-education deform, anti-teacher, anti-union corporatist who wants to destroy the public school system and the teachers in it.

That he's purposely using language that once defined something his father was famously opposed to - the real "death penalty" for convicted criminals - is even more concerning.

It's his way of saying "I am not father, I am not Hamlet on the Hudson, I am no liberal commie pinko - I am a tough guy with tough policies who plans to get tough on 'failing' schools and put them to death."

In the short term, this language and this statement is aimed at Buffalo.

As I conjectured a month and a half ago, it seems obvious that Governor Cuomo and NYSED Commissioner King plan a state takeover of the Buffalo school district.

Cuomo and King have been pissed at Buffalo ever since that side deal the district made with the union over APPR and now they plan to get even by taking over the district, killing off the public schools and opening up charter schools either run by or patronized by their hedge fund cronies.

In the long term, though, it is a declaration of war by Governor Cuomo against teachers.

APPR was of course a strike against teachers and schools in NY State.

Forcing an APPR system on NYC teachers was a strike against NYC teachers.

But Cuomo has ratcheted up the level of animosity and hostility here by using such inflammatory language.

It is high time we return the favor.

If Governor Cuomo thinks it is time some schools be given the "death penalty" for struggles that are often beyond their means to fix, then it is time for teachers of all political ideologies to get together and help pull the plug on the 2014 Cuomo re-election plan and the Cuomo 2016 presidential plan.

Andrew Cuomo is a thug and a bully and a crook, that we've known for a while.

Now, after the "death penalty for schools" statement, he is also a war criminal against public schools.

It is time to put an end to his Reign of Terror.

How in heaven's sake he ever thought that "death penalty" was a proper phrase to use when talking about schools, students and teachers is beyond me.

But it does give you insight into the violent man he is in his heart.

Where Was Merryl Tisch During The Bloomberg Years?

The Daily News today:

The next mayor can expect city students’ test scores to rise, a top state education official predicted Thursday, while also cautioning they shouldn’t be the sole indicator of whether education reforms are working.

Tisch noted scores inevitably rise as schools get familiar with a new exam.

She also urged the public to evaluate the city’s education policies on other criteria — including teachers’ success at communicating with parents and the administration’s record at keeping neighborhood schools open.

Oh, thanks for clarifying what a successful mayoral stewardship of the school system looks like - it's not based solely on test scores, it's not about how many schools you close, and it's not how often you ignore parent and community input in policy decisions.

Of course in the Bloomberg years, he measured success by test scores, school closures and how often he carried out policy while ignoring parent and community input.

It would have been nice if you had gone on record then to let the mayor know he wasn't a successful steward of the school system.

But then, that would have made for awkward moments at the theater and the living room salons where you see Dear Mikey, wouldn't it?

So you kept quiet and only now issue your decree on what a successful mayor stewardship looks like after Bloomberg spent 12 years destroying the system.

At any rate, thanks for clarifying all of this so many years after the fact.

It's like warning about a fire hazard 12 years after the fire burnt the joint down.

Very helpful.

NY Times Poll: 2/3rds Of New Yorkers Say School System Same Or Worse after 12 Years Of Bloomberg's Control

This poll is a clear repudiation of Bloomberg's education "legacy"

In a stinging assessment of the mayor’s priorities and effectiveness, however, two-thirds of New Yorkers say they believe that the quality of the city’s long-troubled school system has stayed the same or become worse since he took office in 2002, despite his vigorous pledges to improve it.

...

There is equally strong opposition to the mayor’s dismantling of the city’s Board of Education in 2002. Fifty-seven percent now disapprove — a sign of dissatisfaction with the mayor’s handling of education since the State Legislature granted him much greater authority over the system. 

The poll shows a profound sense of unease over the state of the public schools, whose reinvention Mr. Bloomberg had put at the center of his mayoralty and his legacy. He has raised teacher pay, closed failing schools, rolled out a letter-grade system for evaluating schools and made it harder for instructors to gain tenure. 

Yet of those surveyed, 32 percent say public education has not changed during Mr. Bloomberg’s three terms; the same percentage say it has grown worse; and 26 percent say it has improved. 

Phyllis Rudnick, a 77-year-old former teacher who lives in the Far Rockaway section of Queens, recalled the difficulty of watching families learn that their local schools would be shut down.

“Parents were so unhappy. They fight so hard to keep schools open,” Ms. Rudnick said. “After 12 years of being mayor, the best thing you can do is shut down a school and start over?”

Bloomberg doesn't generate the same across the board animosity that Rudy Giuliani did at the end of his two terms (at least before 9/11), but for a man who is constantly thinking about his "legacy" (and who has hired plenty of professional journalists and put them on his payroll to burnish that legacy), this poll has to sting.

People are not fooled by his p.r. around school issues, they know the test scores and grad rates were phonied up, they think his school closure polices have been a failure, and they want clear change from the Bloomberg Years.

Note of caution to the next mayor: don't become too enamored of the corporate education reform community and get sucked in by their money and their mythology.

New Yorkers are sick and tired of this reform movement stuff and want some sanity returned to the school system that has seen nothing but constant churn and burn and disruption for the past 12 years.

They want real input into how the school system is run, they want somebody in City Hall who will listen to ALL parents and stakeholders, not just the favored few in the charter school and reform community.

They want change from the autocratic Bloomberg years.

Will Teachers And Schools Be Shown The Same Mercy The Tweedies Are Begging For?

Shael Polakow-Suransky on what the scores from the Common Core tests that will be released to the public tomorrow and are expected to show a sharp drop from last year mean:

"You can't really compare these directly, because they're not just slightly different tests, they're dramatically different tests," said Shael Polakow-Suransky, the city's chief academic officer. "It's going to be difficult to make close comparisons with old state exams."

Ah, but you'll still try and close schools based on these scores, yes?

I mean, there's no moratorium on school closures in place despite the difficulty in making comparisons between the old tests and the new tests, is there?

Which means Shael and his Tweedies want the public to see the test scores one way when it comes to the mayor and the central office staff and a completely different way when it comes to teachers and schools.

Gotta love the contradictions you have to swallow to be a true believer reformer.

Rahm Emanuel's School Closings Put Children's Lives At Risk

From the Associated Press:

CHICAGO — Chicago children displaced by public school closings may be forced to step into the line of fire between warring street gangs as they walk to their new schools each day, a gang expert told a U.S. judge who will rule on a request that he stop planned closings in the nation's third largest school district. 

Taking the stand for lawyers opposed to Chicago Public Schools' recent decision to shutter about 50 public elementary schools, John Hagedorn also testified that rival gangs already are posting warnings on Facebook for the incoming children from other neighborhoods to stay off their turf. 

"It's already aggravating gang conflicts," he said about the pending closings. And if the closings ahead, added the University of Illinois at Chicago professor, "It is likely a child will be shot and killed." 

Gangs often are blamed for Chicago's high murder rate, which topped 500 in 2012 — the first time since 2008 it hit that mark. The murder rate has declined in 2013, with about 200 murders as of early July. 

But recurring Chicago violence has made national news this year, especially after the shooting death of 15-year-old honor student Hadiya Pendleton about a mile from President Barack Obama's Chicago home. 

Gang violence is more chaotic than ever as their hierarchies crumbled over the past decade, breaking down top-down control of 20 or 30 years ago, splintering gangs and leading to infighting within gangs, Hagedorn testified Wednesday. 

"The old times where one gang controlled one neighborhood are gone," he said. "Those changes are what make it especially dangerous to children." 

Closing so many schools at once was a bid to rescue an academically and financially failing system. Officials say the schools were underused and that closing them will save millions, improving schools overall. 

But displaced students, Hagedorn said, will have difficulty grasping boundaries in an increasingly confusing patchwork of gang territories and will struggle to pick up on cues indicating gang violence might be imminent. 

"When children have to cross gang borders, you are putting them in a situation where they are in the line of fire," he testified. "It creates a severe risk for children (going into) unfamiliar neighborhoods."

Rahm Emanuel doesn't really care about any of this.

He simply cares about closing schools, firing teachers, busting the union and helping his edu-entrepreneur buddies make millions from the privatization of the school system.

He doesn't care if children have to die in order for him to accomplish these goals.

Quite literally, he will have blood on his hands when a child or children are killed as a result of this policy.

But hey, this is the guy who helped run the Drone Bomb Administration for four years, wherein they dropped bombs on brown people who they think are terrorists, kill innocent men, women and children in the bargain, then shrug and say that's the cost to fight the War on Terror.

The point is, Rahmbo already has blood drenched hands, so what's a little more in Chicago?

Make Emanuel Pay For This Outrage (UPDATED)

That's the plan:

The board voted 6-0 to back Emanuel on closing 48 elementary schools and one high school program. The vote to close Von Humboldt Elementary was broken out, and passed 4-2. 

The board's solid support for the long, controversial slate of closings came as little surprise to his critics, chief among them the Chicago Teachers Union, which last week filed two federal lawsuits seeking to block the district from following through on its plan.

CTU President Karen Lewis said the union was still hoping courts would intervene to keep schools open but vowed to leverage voter anger over closings to block the re-election of Emanuel, who has said he was prepared to take a political hit for the closings.

"Well, he will," Lewis declared. "I'm glad he's prepared."

Emanuel held no public events Wednesday, but his office released a statement after the vote in which he acknowledged closings were "incredibly difficult" but added, "I firmly believe the most important thing we can do as a city is provide the next generation with a brighter future."

The way to make the future brighter is to beat Rahm Emanuel and send him back to his hedge fund.

That's after winning the civil suits filed to keep these schools opened.

That's the way to make the future brighter.

UPDATE: Emanuel is closing 49 schools to save money.

He's giving DePaul $100 million for a stadium.

The outrages don't stop.

Message To Tisch, King, Walcott And Shael

You say you know test scores will drop significantly this year because of the new Common Core test difficulty.

You say that the drop in scores will be due to the "new baseline" that will be used to measure "college and career readiness," that we shouldn't see these scores as evidence that students are learning less and schools are getting worse.

But you're still going to use the test scores to fire teachers and close schools.

New baseline for measurement of students, but still going to use those scores for APPR and school closures.

No wonder teachers don't trust the people in power and no wonder teachers are suspicious of the real agenda behind Common Core, which seems to be to raise the bar dramatically without providing the supports and resources necessary to reach that bar, then use the Common Core results to bludgeon teachers, close schools and privatize the system.

No wonder we think this whole thing is rigged to drive the corporate/privatization agenda, but couched in the language of "caring about the kids."