Governor Andrew Cuomo, who once promised to be a lobbyist for students, is in reality a lobbyist for charter schools, which enroll about 3% of the state’s students.
He is not a lobbyist for the other 97%, whose schools are cutting their budgets because of Cuomo’s tax cap.
How could this be?
Geoff Decker of Chalkbeat, a New York City’s nonpartisan education blog, explains Cuomo’s close connection with the super-wealthy financiers of the charter schools in New York City.
Decker reviewed campaign filings and reports:
Cuomo’s reelection bid has so far received nearly $400,000 from a cadre of wealthy supporters of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter School network, according to an updated tally of newly-released campaign filings. Some money has even come from Moskowitz’s political action committee, Great Public Schools, which has given $65,000 to Cuomo since 2011.
But that’s not all.
By one tally of the 2014 filings, Cuomo racked up at least $800,000 in donations from 27 bankers, real estate executives, business executives, philanthropists and advocacy groups who have flocked to charter schools and other education causes in recent years.
Many of these financiers are part of a group called “Democrats for Education Reform,” which represents hedge-fund managers and equity investors, who are in turn dedicated to charter schools, privatization, and evaluating teachers by test scores (unless they teach in charter schools!). DFER is no friend of public education. Only charters.
When Cuomo first decided to run for governor, he discovered he could not raise any money from Wall Street unless he first met with Joe Williams, the executive director of DFER (pronounced D-FER). Williams told him that the requirement for any campaign contributions was loyalty to the charter school cause, and voila! In Washington, D.C., DFER is close to the Obama administration, and its executive director in that office used to a top assistant to George Miller, the California Democratic congressman who headed the House Education Committee and who was a favorite of DFER.
According to the story in the New York Times in 2010:
Wall Street has always put its money where its interests and beliefs lie. But it is far less common that so many financial heavyweights would adopt a social cause like charter schools and advance it with a laserlike focus in the political realm.
Hedge fund executives are thus emerging as perhaps the first significant political counterweight to the powerful teachers unions, which strongly oppose expanding charter schools in their current form.
After hearing from Mr. Cuomo, Mr. Williams arranged an 8 a.m. meeting last month at the Regency Hotel, that favorite spot for power breakfasts, between Mr. Cuomo and supporters of his committee, Democrats for Education Reform, who include the founders of funds like Anchorage Capital Partners, with $8 billion under management; Greenlight Capital, with $6.8 billion; and Pershing Square Capital Management, with $5.5 billion.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In politics, Deepthroat’s advice to “Follow the money” always seems to be a good practice.
I have a big problem with charter schools, even the non profit ones, paying their managers with taxpayer money and displacing the public schools’ kids and teachers. Oh, and pretending to have such better results when they don’t because they siphon the public school kids without learning disabilities, ELL students, & students who are behavior problems. Oh, and they have all the good equipment and the public school buildings that they are squatting in (for free) have no supplies or battered-up equipment and furniture. Public school teachers get excessed. The public school students are unfairly squeezed out of their own home schools’s classrooms, auditoriums, gyms and lunchrooms. Eva Moskowitz and other charter operators are siphoning off millions of taxpayer dollars at the expense of all children. (So sad that people are that greedy.)
This is a general statement, not meant to refer to the article mentioned here.
It’s time to revise or eliminate the term “non-partisan,” which, while literally meaning “not affiliated with any political party,” has mistakenly come to mean “neutral or disinterested.”
Chalkbeat, formerly known as Gotham Schools, may be “non-partisan” in the literal sense, but it is far from neutral. In fact, they should have changed the name to “All Charters, All the Time.” The online publication, supported by Hedgistanis, is an unending stream of charter school propaganda and viewpoints.
This is a problem in education coverage in general, since so-called reformers are usually portrayed as being “non-partisan.” Well, with the Democrats having long since joined the Repugs in attacking the public schools, teachers and their unions, this term is worse than useless, since it obscures what is really going on in education, which is that both political parties are captives of an Overclass consensus that sees privatizing the schools as an imperative, and has shown that it will listen to nobody who questions, let alone opposes, it’s agenda.
Beforee we take back the public schools from the so-called reformers, we have to take back the language and the terms of debate.
Politicians have to be put on notice: we don’t care about your political affiliation, we want to know where you stand on the hostile takeover of public education.
“Before we take back the public schools from the so-called reformers, we have to take back the language and the terms of debate.”
No doubt! And not only politically speaking but logically and rationally speaking when referring to educational issues.
Such as XXX test measures YYY. No XXX test doesn’t measure YYY. Using the terms measure or measurement when referring to assessing the teaching and learning process plays right into the hands of the deformers.
Michael Fiorillo & Duane Swacker: I agree.
For example, I do not dispute that there is a general usage and meaning of “achievement” and “performance.” However, it is inextricably tied to the terminology of the psychometricians and their standardized tests. Even on this blog people are so used to using these slippery words that they have—in practice—seemed to have forgotten that there is a much better and more accurate term that is usually avoided/eliminated in the ed debates and MSM coverage of same:
LEARNING. And its associated JOY OF LEARNING.
IMHO, far too often when we use “achievement” and “performance” we ourselves fall into the trap of significantly narrowing the conversation, of redefining “education” so that it fits into a framework that strongly suggests some sort of fix that involves a technical trick or secret sauce or nifty maneuver.
I know this sounds petty. However, notice how often—even on this website—people write “achievement gap” or “performance gap” when what they are actually referring to (when details are proved) is a “test score gap.”
I am not disputing that students at, say, Lakeside School or Sidwell Friends or U of Chicago Lab Schools, etc., could post higher test scores than those at many public schools. In that specific case, we could use (if we are careful) “achievement gap” or “performance gap” to describe the “test score gap.” But I don’t think that’s the bulk of the conversation we want to have. We don’t want to limit the discussion to some contrived numeric score and its associated labeling and sorting and ranking, but rather open it up to how the students at the former schools enjoy significant advantages over the vast majority of their public school counterparts. And leave out for a second—I know this is a big one—what those advantaged students bring into those schools from their home environments. Think just about what those schools offer in abundance, including music, art, international study, an amazing array of athletic programs, etc., not to mention significantly smaller class sizes and (for some of them) impressive physical facilities.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Reblogged this on HTA News & Views and commented:
Governor Cuomo favors the 3% of New York students who attend schools funded by the 1%. Guess who helps fund Cuomo’s election war chest? By the way, Cuomo’s approval rating is down to 42%.
Just heard this commercial on local TV:
“Hello, I’m governor Andrew Cuomo. For all of us there is nothing more important than our children, and their education is everything. While the state’s new Common Core curriculum is headed in the right direction, testing on it is premature, it creates anxiety, and it’s just unfair. I won’t let our children’s scores count against them. Please tell your legislator to join me in protecting our children because education is about helping kids, not hurting them.”
YOU BASTARD!
Now that he has publicly declared CC/Pearson testing unfair will he withdraw APPR evaluations?
Now that he has publicly told the children of NYS that April tests essentially DO NOT COUNT, how can the scores be used in APPR evaluations.
NYSUT – you silence is deafening!
When’s the next election? Throw the bum out. The problem is to find an honest person to be the next governor of New York. This state is teaming with plutocrats. Who can swim against the tide?
I completely appreciate your disdain for charter schools when one takes in the overall data, but there are bright spots in the movement. Schools drawing kids from the poor parts of town and getting them ready for college are out there, and they are worth appreciating. Blanket condemnations can be offensive to those who are taking lower pay to do something right in districts that are failing; those people are teachers, too. (eg James Irwin Charter School, Colorado Springs)