FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 28, 2014
More information contact:
Eric Mihelbergel (716) 553-1123; nys.allies@gmail.com
Lisa Rudley (917) 414-9190; nys.allies@gmail.com
NYS Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) – http://www.nysape.org
Parents and Educators Erupt in Anger Against Governor Cuomo’s
Vow to “Break” Our Public School System
In comments to the Daily News editorial board [http://m.nydailynews.com/news/politics/cuomo-vows-bust-school-monopoly-re-elected-article-1.1989478], Governor Andrew Cuomo infuriated the members of NYS Allies for Public Education, an organization that consists of over fifty parent and educator advocacy groups across New York State. The Governor vowed to “break” the state’s public school system, which he called “one of the only remaining public monopolies.” He said he would do this by expanding charter schools, competition, and imposing tougher teacher evaluations along with punitive sanctions: “The teachers don’t want to do the evaluations and they don’t want to do rigorous evaluations.” He condescended to parents by implying that the only reason parents erupted in protest was that teachers got “parents upset last year about this entire Common Core agenda.”
Eric Mihelbergel, Erie County Public School parent and founding member of NYSAPE, “The governor’s anti-public school and anti-parent rant has only confirmed what many parents have suspected for quite some time. This governor has no respect for our public schools, parents, or teachers. He is a bully, plain and simple.”
Nancy Cauthen, a New York City public school parent, pointed out, “Despite previous statements in which Cuomo absolved himself from the responsibility for imposing fundamentally flawed Common Core standards, curriculum, and high-stakes exams, and tried to blame this entirely on the State Education Department, it is clear that he continues to believe in this damaging agenda. As several polls recently showed, the majority of New Yorkers are opposed to the Common Core; and yet he continues to defend it and reveals he will push it even harder in a second term. The governor has revealed himself to be completely out of touch with what parents and communities want for our schools.
According to Marla Kilfoyle, a Long Island parent and educator and one of the leaders of the national organization known as the BATs, “Governor Cuomo’s continued war on the teaching profession and public education is a direct assault on children and their families. He continues to cut funding, disrespect parents, insult teachers, and hurt our children. Enough is enough!”
“Once again, Cuomo has put hedge fund managers, corporate interests and his charter school cronies above public school students and their families. Truth be told, parents see the devastating impact of the Common Core on our children every single day around our own dinner tables. We know that Common Core is failing our students and Cuomo is failing New York’s children,” said Anna Shah, Dutchess County public school parent.
Lisa Rudley, a Westchester public school parent and Education Director of the Autism Action Network commented, “In his rant, Governor Cuomo calls public educators ‘the only remaining public monopoly.’ Would the governor consider firefighters and police officers a monopoly? Will he call for competition and sanctions based upon unreliable metrics for health care workers and other public service professionals? If so, it appears that his real goal is to dismantle our public schools to garner more support from his financial backers.”
“Governor Cuomo’s assertion that competition leads to better schools is ludicrous,” noted Ulster County public school parent, Bianca Tanis. “If he thinks that the answer to a lack of adequate funding for our schools is charter schools, competition, and test-based ranking and sorting, he is calling for a Hunger Games regime that will disadvantage all students, but especially those most vulnerable – our special needs students and children living in poverty.”
Before going to the polls next Tuesday, New Yorkers can see the education positions of all four gubernatorial candidates, including Governor Cuomo, on NYSAPE’s website.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m voting for Zephyr Teachout via write-in.
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Vote for Hawkins on the Green line instead. It sends the same message and improves the location of the Greens on the next four years of ballots, possibly moving from 4th line to 3rd.
If Teachout had obtained the WFP nod, we’d see the WFP likely move up the ballot, but since Cuomo made a deal with them, she lost the nomination, which was his intent all along, to remove the one person of the left who could pose a real challenge.
His plan worked perfectly. She isn’t on the ballot next week, so he will get the lions share of Democratic votes.
Step outside the box. I’m a Democrat and I’m supporting Hawkins, the ONLY candidate who has publicly supported teachers and is against charters.
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Your actions are part of what it will take to get “choice” into politics.
(The irony is killing me. It needs to be brought to light.)
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I am doing the same. I hope there’s some kind of campaign to encourage more voters to do this. I’m not a knee jerk Demicrat, especially because Cuomo obviously doesn’t believe or support democracy
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To the Wonderful Lisa Rudley, Who is a Mover and Shaker, an Inspiration, and A True Education Activists for Parents:
No, the governor will not consider firefighters and police to be a public monopoly because he will depend upon them to control crowds, demonstrations, protests, and the unmentionable here.
But we teachers alongside with parents will continue to band, grow, organize, mobilize, launch, demonstrate, protest, petitions, maintain surveillance over our elected officials, and boycott as our public commons are sacrificed for private, monetized interests.
Andrew Cuomo is a disgrace to this state and almost all that is moral and decent. He is but part and parcel to the new gilded age where the public commons are demonized in the name of “efficiency”, which is code for privatization.
If he thinks charter schools are the answer, he is both ignorant and corrupt.
All the politicians who are ruining the middle and working classes to turn our nation into Chile, Mexico, or Honduras will get their come uppance . . . . Bad karma sent out comes back multiplied.
I thank Lisa and so many other activists for commenting and educating people on public education. I am not implying here that teachers can get anything they want in a contract, but privatizing the system and eliminating unions will only make education worse for the masses.
But what would the hideous beast Cuomo know, since his own children don’t attend public school.
He does not care about other people’s children:
https://www.credomobilize.com/petitions/gov-cuomo-fund-public-schools-not-the-corporate-education-industry
Lisa Rudely is a parent activist and voice in my very own district, and she is tenacious and a powerful, effective reminder of the virtues of voice, persistence, and educating others . . . .
Vote for the Green party with Howie Hawkins and Brian Jones!
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Andrew Cuomo has a combined 37 parent-years’ worth of public school experience. His children all attended public schools in the Byram Hills district, his twins for 1-12 and the youngest for K-12.
(Please spare me the rebuttal that these are somehow not public schools–they are precisely the type of non-integrated wealthy public schools that our host and posters here hold up as evidence that Anerican public schools are as fine as any in the world.)
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These facts make Cuomo’s condemnation of public schools more illogical. The problems that SOME public schools have is not due to their publicness or their unions; it’s due to the problems in the immiserated communities they serve. Busting the “monopoly” will do nothing to make educating South Bronx kids easier. Is triage, a la KIPP or Success, the best solution we’ve found? Well this can be done WITHIN the public system if politicians like Cuomo advocate for it. But no: their real goal is not improving the schools; it’s busting the unions and giving more power to the oligarchs.
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If “busting the monopoly” means creating opportunities for parents to choose their kids’ school… it may indeed make educating some “South Bronx kids” easier, i.e., some of the ones whose parents make that choice.
If it means “weeding out bad teachers,” I tend to agree with you.
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This fact makes his diatribe against the public school system in NY even more self-serving. Wonder how many charters we’ll see cropping up in Byram Hills? He wouldn’t send his own kids to a Moskowitiz test-prep factory if his life depended on it. Now that his kids are out of the system, he feels free to try to tear it down. A true demagogue that just might have misplayed this hand.
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Ironically, Moskowitz sends her kid to a Moskowitz test-prep factory.
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I wrote in such a rush that my fact base and sentiment were correct internally but obviously communicated very poorly when it came to where his children attended.
What I meant – and please forgive my lack of clarity and unintentionally misleading statement – is that yes, they did attend public school, but extremely wealthy municipalities that have little to no ethnic and income diversity behave very much, in terms of performance and absence of learning and teaching barriers, like rich private schools.
So to say that his kids attended public schools is correct factually, but not the brand of public school that is typical throughout NY state and the nation.
Compared to urban districts and suburban districts that have low income “urban” populations, Byram Hills is a country club. . . . I interviewed there long ago before I started teaching in my present district.
I’m unimpressed with his kids attending there. Elitist and disconnected is as elitist and disconnected does . . . .
(Nothing against Byram Hills, but I would like to see many of the very wealthy individuals there pay more in federal and state income taxes, and I would like to see those taxes level the playing field for all children attending public schools in NY state. . . . . )
Andrew Cuomo is a toad who will never turn into a prince . . . .
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“Communicated poorly . . . lack of clarity . . . my fact base and sentiment were correct internally . . . ”
Please tell me this is a parody. You could not have typed that with a straight face. Regardless, this is possibly the most hilarious mea culpa I’ve ever seen in my life.
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Oh Tim, spoken like a true non-educator. Don’t be foolish and attempt to count the parenting of privileged children in a privileged, professional, supportive community as “experience.” The rampant disfunction in a growing number of our communities infects our classrooms. Our children struggle to keep up after having started so far behind. You clearly have about as much experience in a public classroom as I have in a hospital operating room. I would never be so bold as to interject myself into a discussion about open-heart surgery. Why do you feel so bold to discuss contemporary educational challenges?
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Miss Meg,
I think poster Tim was responding to Poster Robert Rendo’s internally correct but externally false statement that Andrew Cuomo’s children don’t (or rather didn’t) attend public schools. It seems like an observation that anyone living in the external world might reasonably make.
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When you put in a 10 hour straight workday with but 20 minutes to eat lunch, you do get things mixed up. .. which is what happens when you teach a low income, limited English, emerging bilingual/sequential bilingual/simultaneous bilingual population like I do. It’s thrilling and delightful and full of wonderful growth and accomplishment, but it’s also energy consuming.
Byram Hills is a public school by all means. But its tax base is outlier compared to the vast majority.
I hope this clears it up for FLERP and Tim, who may indulge now and then in a close reading and engage in the cognitive skill known as inference . . . .
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FLERP: the only choices that will “save” some South Bronx kids are schools that manage to segregate the motivated and manageable from the chronically disruptive and extremely damaged. The charters that don’t do this tend to be just as dysfunctional (if not worse) as the regular public schools there. The “failure” of ordinary inner city schools stems from their state-mandated inclusiveness. Cuomo could say that state-law needs to be changed to allow public schools to exclude the toughest-to-teach so that they can excel like KIPP. Beefed up “alternative schools” could house/teach these kids. Triage might be the best thing we can do. I might support such a plan. But instead of giving an honest account of the situation, Cuomo perpetuates the lie that these public schools are failing because the teachers there are inept and that unions are stifling necessary personnel and policy changes. The many heroic teachers in these tough schools are thereby slandered. This is wrong.
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Ponderosa — I think you’ve described exactly the issue that very few want to talk about, certainly including Cuomo.
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Also, Ponderosa, I wonder how much much inclusiveness states actually mandate. The key factor that enables this kind of sorting may be choice, not private management of schools. It could be accomplished by simply expanding things that already exist in large school systems, such as G&T programs. Most people, even on these comment threads, seem to think either that G&T is a good thing or that G&T is tolerable. I’ve never seen anyone argue that G&T is illegal, though.
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FLERP!,
While I agree that very few here argue against G&T classes directly, many of the arguments used to condemn charter schools apply with at least equal force against G&T schools and programs.
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Two unzoned NYC DOE “progressive” schools that have been highly praised for their involvement with the “opt-out” movement, the Brooklyn New School and Castle Bridge Elementary, use exactly the same lottery admissions procedure as NYC charter schools, and have student demographics that do not resemble those of the districts or DOE schools in which they are located. What is intolerable, inhumane, and anti-democratic in one context is apparently perfectly okay when it involves the “good guys.”
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Well, Robert, if you spend any part of that 10 hour day shoveling BS with the intensity and flair that you’ve displayed in this exchange, then I don’t doubt that you are plumb tuckered out. But I’m sorry that my shoddy skills of inference caused you to make a mistake.
Just so we’re clear, you did/do send your own children to schools in the polyglot multiethnic socioeconomically diverse district in which you work, right? (speaking of that, I’m genuinely sad to see that it appears it has finally contracted a touch of the old white flight)
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Time is linear. Combining it as you did makes no sense. Cuomo is not getting my vote — I don’t care where his kids went to school. I’m going with Hawkins.
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Tim
You sound like the kid who relished the chance to find a typo on your 6th grade teacher’s worksheets. I can almost see the smirk on your 11 year old face every time you corrected one of her errors. Other giving us another”Na na, na-na, na” moment, what exactly is your point regarding Cuomo’s outrageous statements that have lit the NY public school sphere on fire?
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If we can’t relish a response like Robert’s, what relish is there left in the world? To his credit, I suppose, he did at least acknowledge that it’s “externally” wrong to say that Cuomo never sent his kids to public school. Diane wrote the same thing in a recent post (which may be where Robert got the notion) and never acknowledged it was wrong or corrected the post.
It’s not difficult to just say “Looks like I got that one wrong.” You can even add a “but my main point still stands.”
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But being the eternally eleven-year-old pedant that I am, I left a comment on that thread correcting Diane’s mistake, too. Hopefully it’ll eventually sink in.
But I want to stress again that when someone invokes the (debatable) claim that our <10% FRPL-eligible schools score as well as anyone in the world, that poverty is the problem, and that every school should be lavishly funded and well equipped, Byram Hills is exactly what that looks like in real life (minus the racial diversity that traditional district school advocates pay lip service to). Tough to argue that what one wants to be the norm is also elitist.
Flerp, I may be misreading your arguments, but I believe there are significant differences in the quality of instruction in schools at every point on the spectrum, even if it ultimately is smoothed over by the background and ability of the kids. Some elite private schools have great curricula and instruction, some are lousy. Same with high-end suburban high schools, wealthy NYC DOE elementary gen eds, and schools in disadvantaged areas. Charters benefit from the application screen to be sure (a benefit I have no problem with), but I think it is more complicated than that.
Let's see, what else. I got the concept of the "parent year" from activists like Leonie Haimson and Caroline Grannan. Replace it with whatever measure you like. http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-personal-note.html?m=1
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“I believe there are significant differences in the quality of instruction in schools at every point on the spectrum, even if it ultimately is smoothed over by the background and ability of the kids.”
I don’t disagree with that. What I’m skeptical about is whether there is a significant, untapped pool of better teachers available to replace the worse ones. I don’t know the answer to that question, but my gut reaction is skepticism.
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In José Vilson’s latest blog entry (for which he’ll take some heat, I’m guessing), he estimates 1-2 out of every 40 teachers don’t belong in the profession. Assuming that is in the ballpark, wouldn’t the odds actually be pretty good that their replacements, either veteran or newcomer, would be better? This is a much smaller task than a 5% “rank and yank” plan (which I’m not sure anyone has seriously proposed anyway).
http://thejosevilson.com/bad-teachers-everywhere-time-even/
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Maybe. Certainly the difficulty of finding better replacements depends on how many you’re trying to replace.
To me, this raises more questions that I don’t know the answer to. One that’s relevant to this post about Cuomo is: Would the current evaluation system in NY (or an even tougher one, to the extent Cuomo is proposing that) identify and weed out the 1-2 teachers that Vilson’s talking about?
What’s the reason these 1-2 teachers haven’t already been replaced? Is it because administrators don’t bother because they find termination process to be too much of a hassle? Is it because administrators disagree with Vilson about these 1-2 teachers? Or are these teachers so horrendously bad that it is obvious to any observer?
If the reason these 1-2 teachers haven’t been replaced is because administrators are incompetent and/or refuse to do their jobs,
And again, if these teachers are so horrendously bad that it is obvious to any observer, why haven’t they been replaced? Is it because tenure laws make it too difficult, or is it because administrators are incompetent and/or refuse to do their jobs?
Should these administrators replaced with people who will do what these administrators are unable or unwilling to do?
Is having 1-2 teachers out of 40 who are patently and horrendously bad just the cost of doing business under NY’s current tenure laws?
As usual, heck if I know.
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I see my response was a bit incoherent in the middle, externally speaking, but your powers of inference will make sense of it.
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@Ponderosa I completely agree with you on your 8:10pm comment. It’s easier for Cuomo to do nothing and let his hedge fund donors and their pet project charter schools run amok than actually have an education policy, which requires real consideration of disadvantaged communities and their needs.
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Andrew Cuomo’s years of public school experience through his children is not sequential. It is cumulative from the time the first child entered Kinder, until the last child finished grade 12. The twins constitute 12 years and the third child who is three years younger, adds three years, for a total of 15 years.
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Well, Tim.
I still cannot figure out how you figured out the 37 year experience Cuomo had with his children’s public schooling, but maybe that’s because you don’t have the number sense you would have ordinarily been taught under the CCSS. You may not have had any of this reform in your own education. Not to worry; you’re pushing it all now.
Poor Tim.
Tim states: “Just so we’re clear, you did/do send your own children to schools in the polyglot multiethnic socioeconomically diverse district in which you work, right? (speaking of that, I’m genuinely sad to see that it appears it has finally contracted a touch of the old white flight)”
I am fascinated by your contentment with the white flight, and would tend to think that any community you would flee would be facing cause for celebration, in fact moving from a Danielson 2 (“developing”) to a Danielson 4 (“highly effective”).
Tim, I would tell you to rent an Archie Bunker costume this Halloween, but, c’mon now: 1) It’s a little redundant; 2) You might fit into the costume, but would your swollen head, bursting with racism and hubris, really be able to squeeze into the top portion? Or the pants might not fit either, given where your brains are factually located.
Anyway, Tim, my point was that all public schools should be as well equipped and resourced as Byram Hills, but I’m afraid our federal tax dollars cannot stretch far enough because they are spoken for in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, offshore tax havens for corporations, and tax loopholes for very wealthy individuals.
Funny, Tim, something tells me you really not in the top half of the 1%, yet you seem to identify with them. What an obsessive phenomenon . . . .
Tim states: “But being the eternally eleven-year-old pedant that I am, I left a comment on that thread correcting Diane’s mistake, too. Hopefully it’ll eventually sink in.”
Now, really, Timothy. Don’t you think that’s a little insulting to most 11 year olds, who display far more maturity and wisdom than you. I am sorry you feel like an adult man trapped inside the body of an emotionally arrested 11 year old, but I think you might grow up if you were to embark upon a career teaching high needs, low income populations, and attempt to do it really well and with not many resources.
Don’t you all out there in blog land wish you could be just a little more like Tim?
Just a little?
Then all the world’s problems would be solved, and then under that laughably simplistic model, we would perceive and “feel” the solutions rather than actively solve the problems . . . . . . .
In fact, the next time, I have any doubts about anything, I will defer to my new mantra:
“Tim knows best. It’s all about Tim”.
Wayne’s world with Dana Carvey?
Nah . . . . .
TIM’s WORLD . . . . . . . Party on . . . . .
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Robert, do you or did you send your own kids to school in the same district where you work? Pretty simple question.
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This is sort of a silly debate, but I might as well get a comment in. You might think of the paths that students take through schools as independent parental experiences. For example, two of my children attended different junior high schools, so I think it is reasonable to count those two parental experiences with public education separately even though both were still in K-12 at the same time.
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Hee, hee!
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And TIm states that he is “genuinely sad” to see a “final touch of white flight” from (my?) community.
The words convey one thing, and the tone, given the overall leanings of Tim, impart something quite different. I refer to the author’s tone.
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Yes, Tim, pretty simple question from a pretty simplistic guy . . . .
One can no longer send their kids to the same district they work in unless one resides in that same district.
There were exceptions to this rule many years ago, and then those exceptions changed to require that out-of-towners pay the district a specific fee. . .. something like two to four thousand dollars for each year of attendance.
Now there are NO exceptions, given the scarcity of funding and increasing dependence on the local tax base, thanks to our den of thieves federal government not kicking in enough money.
Mitch McConell is too busy using our tax dollars to privatize social security.
But who really cares about ANY of this?
There’s only one solution, and that is to fire every bad teacher and push the CCSS. That will solve poverty.
Tim, surely you must have lived in western Europe or have deep ties there.
Poverty?
What?!!!!!
Hah . . .. That angle is for stuffy intellects who know nothing about what they purport.
Don’t think. Don’t bother. . . . . Just turn to Dim.
I meant “Tim”. . . . I need typing skills.
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Robert,
Making up your own facts and throwing a tantrum after being called out for it is one thing; smearing me as a racist is quite another. You have revealed an awful lot about your character in these comments.
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“His children all ATTENDED public schools…”
I think that’s known as “past tense”, meaning that Cuomo’s precious progeny, now “safely” out of high school, will not have to be subject to their father’s predatory, sociopathic impulses, driven by his delusions of grandeur and a megalomaniacal lust for even more power, control and dominance over the lives of innocent millions.
I’ll be impressed when Cuomo and whatever Number Wife this is, have a brand new baby and they enroll THAT child in a public school that has been subject to all of Daddy’s horrific sellout “reforms”.
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Puget Sound, they can’t have a baby until they get married. They are very modern, but not that modern.
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Not in New York but can the feel the anger. Not much better here, and no viable alternative candidate. Cuomo is intent on showing everyone there is NO political penalty for bashing teachers and unions, no apologies needed.
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Teaching economist, I imagine that you are correct. Here lies my concern. The current educational policy makers/reformers exist in the external world. In what other profession would the inexperienced be invited to make such critical decisions? Those driven by greed have pushed past experienced practitioners and conscripted our children to labor for profit. Our new de’mock’racy.
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Miss Meg,
The military is an obvious example of a profession where the commander in chief might well have no experience in military matters, but ultimately any organization controlled by the democratic process might well be thought of as having inexperienced non-experts in charge. My local school board, for example, is not made up of experienced educators.
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The president does not draw up battle plans or impose his military philosophy onto the armed forces. His decisions regarding military matter are never made without input from his experts in the field.
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NYS,
The president doesn’t? I am not at those meetings, so I can not say for sure.
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The president is in command of the military because the civilian government, elected by the people, is in control of the military (supposedly) rather than visa versa. Similarly, self-interested, tax-evading private oligarchs and their paid shills are not supposed to control (i.e., exploit) the public realm of education for their own personal profit.
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Who is the anti-Cuomo up for election? In NJ I don’t even know how to vote anymore (except never for Christie). Booker seems a shoe-in, and I hate him too. Two sides of the same corruption; they even share funders.
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Rob Astorino is the Republican candidate. He even has a Stop Common Core ballot line. Howie Hawkins is the Green party candidate polling at a record high 10%.
Polls are indicating that Astorino is cutting into Cuomo’s big lead.
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Just catching up now about Cuomo’s remarks.
I am . . . appalled.
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Cross-posted at
with this comment (with embed links at Oped):
Of all the propaganda that is out there, the most insidious is the national narrative who spreads the propaganda of the billionaire oligarchs, offering “school choice,’ while creating the opposite. Cuomo MUST end public education so that his radical party can convince an ignorant population that their versions of history, of science and of the Constitution are the truth. Democracy depends on shared knowledge!
Cuomo will win, because the MEDIA DOES NOT COVER THE TRUTH, they can bamboozle the public with his lies about ‘choice.’
He is doing this even though in Massachusetts “the charter industry is stunned by the possibility that Massachusetts may not authorize any new charters this year. This would be the first time in 15 years that no new charters were opened. Proponents say the move represents another blow in their quest to open more charter schools across the state. It comes just three months after the state Senate overwhelmingly rejected an increase in the number of charter schools that can operate in low-performing districts.”
“Charters were stopped in Brockton and Fitchburg because the law says that they should open only in districts that are in the bottom 10% on state tests. Neither district is in the bottom 10%.Created under the 1993 Education Reform Act, charter schools are intended to be laboratories of educational innovation. They operate under looser state regulations than traditional schools and are rarely unionized and yet more than a dozen have closed, typically because of low test scores or financial problems”
It is up to all of us to make it clear that if Cuomo continues his destruction of the schools, his political career will suffer.
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I can’t wait to vote on Tuesday. Whether I vote for Teachout (as a write-in) or Hawkins I have yet to decide, but hear me loud and clear: I, a lifelong Democrat will NOT be voting for Cuomo. If Astorino wins, so be it. I will be able to sleep at night knowing I did not contribute to the demise of the public school system.
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And I’ll be right behind you at the polls, thinking the exact same thoughts, voting in the exact same way.
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How strange that here in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, the Democrat, Tom Wolf, is running strongly as pro-public education, pro fair funding formula, and for reform of the laws which govern the creation, funding, and auditing of charter schools. He is favored to defeat Tom Corbett, not primarily because of Corbett’s awful jobs record or because Corbett is anti-woman or anti- environment, but because of Corbett’s four-year record of destroying public education, not just in Philly but across the state, in suburban and rural districts. Supporting public education and teachers seems to be a winning argument for the Democrat in Pennsylvania this time around. Why not in New York? It is sad that Zephyr Teachout wasn’t given the opportunity to prove the New York Democrats (for Education Reform) like Cuomo are embarassments to the party and on the wrong side of the argument.
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I think there’s a huge difference between pro-charter and anti-public. When it flips to anti-public people object, because most kids are in public schools. If they think ed reform is actually harming their schools, they notice. Understandably.
That’s what’s happening in Ohio and Michigan and, IMO, Pennsylvania.
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And, by going the “anti-public school” route, Cuomo has (unintentionally) admitted that charter schools are not in fact “public schools”.
A New Paltz teacher and parent has very succinctly summed Cuomo’s remarks to the Times Herald-Record: “It’s like his mouth exploded.”
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Pro charter is automatically anti public. Charters drain students and resources from public schools.
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It’s funny, because if I was an ed reformer politician I would assume I had to explain at some point how ed reform benefits existing public schools. It’s kind of amazing to me that they don’t feel they have to do this, just considering the numbers. “More”. More voters.
They seem to think public school parents are this sort of default, silent group who can be completely ignored. I don’t think that’s true. Maybe it’s true, but I’ll be surprised if it is. Doesn’t seem to be true in Pennsylvania.
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“I’ll be Presidant”
I’ll bust the public schools
Said Cuomo in a rant
You teachers are just fools
And I’ll be Presidant
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New York has good public schools. Is everything perfect and is there room for improvement? Of course there is. But to pretend as Cuomo does that the system can be radically overhauled or demolished with a better result is utterly wrong. It raises huge red flags about his judgment not only on education policy, but state policy overall.
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I won’t vote for him. He is a Republican in Democrat’s clothing. An affront to everything I stand for. I’ll take the green party candidate before I vote for him.
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D I N O mite ! democrat in name only
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I’m sorry that I’m not able to write this up – it’s coming down the pipeline and being pushed very quickly, and I’m working on trying to slow it down for analysis prior to signing. Please view the following link documenting “The Power of 15”: http://www.completecollege.org/docs/CCA%20Intensity%20Brief-April3.pdf
The idea is to provide courses to high school students during their senior year offering BOTH high school credit and college credit, thus lowering the financial burden while obtaining the magic number of 15 credits per year so students graduate college within four years.
This stinks like Gates all over!
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My response as Education Chair to the District 214 EA President (whom I very much respect) was as follows:
If there is a contract associated with this deal, then the EA needs to see it and have the opportunity to go over it in minute detail. What I’ve seen with the privatization of infrastructure (roads, bridges, railway) is local and state government receives a private corporate “champion” investor. The language written in the contract mandates the “applicant” to own/have rights to needed right-of-way” (View: Value Capture aka Highway Robbery” at students4democracy.net; also, “Loophole Allows Many Dangerous Chemicals In Fracking Fluid to Go Unreported” – fracking, in addition to atomic bomb trains, are snaking beside my home. I’m hearing something sounding like gunfire on a consistent basis, and there is a hidden water treatment facility in the area when everyone around here uses well water. Also, water assessment of my well revealed chemicals consistent with fracking). These issues are not education related – but they exemplify the methodology behind public sector takeover.
With train mitigating in my area, legal contracts used terminology such as “common carrier” to refer to atomic bomb-sized exploding trains with leaking toxic chemicals that kill people, rather than representing the typical nonhazardous freight that was traditionally carried prior to the CN – Canadian National – Bill Gates privatization of Canadian National Railway campaign.
The term “light rail” was used, yet this terminology pertains to passengers, not weight or frequency of travel; therefore, 100+ car trains traveling 20+ times per day is considered “light rail”.
Harper College, Illinois, is a private sector entity. Any contract given consideration with the private sector MUST be evaluated with a fine tooth comb, and every bit of terminology used MUST be identified and agreed upon in writing. Also, a thorough cost analysis MUST be performed and should be approved by the D214 Board of Education. ALL curricular materials, including but not limited to books, software, and assessments MUST be identified and assigned a specific figure down to the last .999 cent!
The IL State Board of Education didn’t do that little piece of homework, and that’s why we are buried in over $400M of PARCC!
The curricular materials need first be approved by experienced classroom teachers, those who will say it’s crap if it’s crap!
Criteria for awarded credit MUST first be approved by classroom teachers, so we don’t set up classes that kids can’t pass (CCSS/PARCC) and have to pay Harper for materials and other hidden costs while never achieving the initial goal of acquiring students free college credit – nothing comes free these days (just ask Greedy Gates).
Finally, conditions need to be identified for the following situation: if D214 proceeds with good intentions, which we ALWAYS do, and down the road realizes this is a scam, we need to be able to pull out without paying any type of fee and/or damages.
If all of the above seems acceptable, then offer kids free college credit – IF they want it. I prefer to promote career-related courses and the opportunity to take classes in which students have interest and enjoy – after all, they are KIDS and NOT mini-adults.
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ASIDE: Perhaps Mercedes Schneider’s next FOIA request of choice might pertain to the financials of superintendents – are they receiving any Gates Foundation “contributions”? In a FOIA request I made regarding the financials of the Police Chief of my village, I found hundreds of thousands of dollars of payments made by CN – Canadian National – a.k.a. Bill Gates (single largest shareholder circa 2011).
God Bless!
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http://www.howiehawkins.org/teacherunions
Next week presents an opportunity for New Yorkers to align their beliefs in the democratic process and the necessity of our public school system to remain intact with their vote.
Vote Green…there is no other choice. Vote for an individual who is honorable and intelligent and is an ardent supporter of public education and teacher expertise and participation in the development of policy.
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CUOMO LOGIC: The governor is right that schools should offer diverse program choices and competing methods of teaching in search of best practices. Unfortunately, he is the biggest impediment to innovation in public schools. As teachers in NY, we have very little latitude for creativity or alternative practices as Cuomo imposes more and more corporatized curriculum and top-down scripting, stricter adherence to regulations and of course, everything is about test prep, with no exemptions, even for children in crisis.
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Cuomo is dead to me. Millions of dollars that should have been used to support the education of our children has been tossed into the waiting arms of corporations. School districts have been forced to reduce teaching staff in order to accommodate the increase demand for the hiring of non-essential, data-crunching, office staff. Class sizes in our impoverished schools have exploded as a result of his initiatives. He fancies himself an innovator who will rescue our schools from failure. What a fool. His witch hunt is irrational and his arrogance, nauseating.
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Reblogged this on Femininican and commented:
Before Cuomo inflicted Common Core on our kids & their teachers, our district had EXCELLENT public schools, which included wonderful teachers who were genuinely enthusiastic about helping young minds to grow a love of learning. My kids’ elementary school was a happy place. Common Core made everyone miserable, and my own kids suffered so badly that I felt compelled to remove them from what had become a TOXIC environment for their own well being. We are a homeschool family now, but if Cuomo loses re-election and the State repeals the destructive CCS so that our schools & teachers can resume being an excellent place for children to learn, I’d consider giving public school another chance for at least one of my kids (the one who always had perfect grades and LOVED school, and her teachers, before Common Core made her so miserable that I was getting daily phone calls from the school counsellor about my child having “meltdowns” which are completely out if character for my happy-go-lucky kid).
I know that many teachers lean left politically, but I urge you to consider giving thought to casting your ballot on Tuesday to consider denying Cuomo re-election and giving us a real opportunity to rid ourselves of the abusive (to students, teachers, and parents alike) Common Core. We still have secret ballots, so don’t worry about being ostracized by your liberal peers if you vote against Common Core and for Rob Asterino.
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I must point out a vote for ANY candidate other than Cuomo can serve to deny him the Governorship. Hawkins can draw away Democratic voters, perhaps enough for Astorino to win. Not very likely, but not impossible.
I mention this because I feel you should vote to support a candidate, not to just deny the office to another.
So I will not vote for Mr. Astorino for reasons that have to do with my values, ethics, and views on a great number of issues, many far removed from education. I won’t vote for him – not because I’m a liberal, but because I disagree with his position on so many issues, while Hawkins tracks much better with me.
That’s an important distinction.
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Having both the UFT leadership, along with other unions, and deBlasio kicking Teachout off the WFP ballot, it’s no surprise that Cuomo was never going to show any gratitude. But the fact that our union did this knowing the bond Cuomo has with privatizers is frightening. So, I will be voting Green. And for all those teachers who voted for Cuomo in the primary, or even worse, didn’t vote at all, shame on you!! When you think how close Teachout came with very little money and taking most of upstate, I have to ask the teachers in NYC and LI, what is wrong with you????
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Vote for Howie. The Democratic Party in NY and across the nation has sold its soul to corporate puppet masters and abandoned its progressive ideals.
Shock the system. Go Green.
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The revolution has started, Governor Cuomo has declared war on public schools and teachers. Governor Cuomo has no respect for our dedicated and hard working teachers. It’s time Karen Magee stood up to Governor Cuomo and exposed him for the bully he is. It’s time Karen Magee and NYSUT took off the kid gloves and started playing hardball with Governor Cuomo.
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Reblogged this on seldurio.
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I wonder why Teachout isn’t endorsing Hawkins.
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I’m sorry that I’m not able to write this up – it’s coming down the pipeline and being pushed very quickly, and I’m working on trying to slow it down for analysis prior to signing. Please view the following link documenting “The Power of 15”: http://www.completecollege.org/docs/CCA%20Intensity%20Brief-April3.pdf
The idea is to provide courses to high school students during their senior year offering BOTH high school credit and college credit, thus lowering the financial burden while obtaining the magic number of 15 credits per year so students graduate college within four years.
This stinks like Gates all over!
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Gerri,
There are certainly high school students who need to have college level classes to be appropriately challenged. Allowing these classes to count towards high school graduation and relieving the families of the burden of tuition payments at colleges and universities for these high school students seems like a reasonable idea to me.
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GKS, This link has 6-pages re completion times for college students taking 15 credits cf 12 per semester & dropout rates for always part-time/sometimes part-time/full-time. Read it twice, didn’t see the HS program you described. Is there a different link?
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Cuomo is crafty, even getting judges in his pocket , like Breslin, to move along the Charter Expansion.http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/state-comptroller-audit-charter-schools-judge-article-1.1721265
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Cuomo forgets he is a “public servant” and will remember that when he is, hopefully, voted out. How dare he. Guess he really is one of the entitled ones. I wonder, does he secretly have a stake in a charter, somewhere?
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The discussion on writing in your candidate of choice at the top of the thread is totally relevant in a much wider context. America has been so brow beaten and bullied into a stupor by campaign ads and even more so by the venal stupidity of politicians that it has all but forgotten that it can write in any candidate it chooses, including inanimate objects. I would love to see a protest movement where the “Silent Majority” who typically do not vote hear the message that they can write in anyone or anything they like and then do so as a protest. Imagine the panic among the political class and the lame stream media commentary when Bart Simpson or the mailbox on the corner gets enough votes to be impossible to ignore.If you are totally disgusted by the system and think your vote matters not, then don’t be silent. At the very least, use the ballot box to express your righteous indignation at the fact that politicians don’t work for the people at all any more.
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Share this post with my BoE and after initially being upset they tried to trace it back to the source and could not locate it. If it was legitimate and is still available out there please e-mail me the source at
Jmalys@roadrunner.com
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So the teachers will take all of their ire with Cuomo and vote for Howie Hawkins who has zero potential to resolve this issue instead of voting for Rob Astorino who has vowed to oppose Common Core and the APPR teacher rating system which destroys tenure. If Cuomo gets re-elected, the parents WILL ultimately protect and save our children from this tyranny. But the teaching profession will be destroyed forever.
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