Governor Cuomo made clear that he thinks the current system of teacher evaluation in New York is inadequate. Too many teachers have been found to be effective or highly effective. In his way of thinking, the proportion of ineffective teachers would be as high as the proportion of students with low scores. With a “meets proficiency” rate of only 31% on the state’s Common Core tests, most teachers would be found ineffective, and there would be a whole lot of firing. Then Cuomo would have the challenge of replacing most of the state’s teachers. He knows nothing about education, about teaching, or about children. I could give him a reading list, but he wouldn’t read it. It is frightening to have consequential decisions made by a man who is so uninformed.

 

Cuomo, who never attended a public school, never taught a day in his life, never sent his own children to public school,  wants to crack down on teacher evaluation.

 

He seems not to know that New York has one of the most inequitably funded school systems in the nation. Certainly he knows nothing about the needs of children other than his own and those of his privileged friends. He thinks that breaking teachers and harassing them with test scores will drive up test scores. He is not a stupid man. He is just stupid on the subject of education. As we know, he is in love with charter schools. They get high scores by keeping out the hardest to educate chidden. That must be his ideal.

 

Statewide, the teacher evaluations found only 1 percent of teachers were rated “ineffective” and 5 percent of teachers rated “developing.” Cuomo, while not elaborating on any specific policy revisions, stressed the need for change in the current education system.
The governor also seemed to say that school funding could be based on performance, although a spokesman said he was speaking more narrowly about competitive grants.
“We’re now saying to the public education system, ‘You have to perform and you’re not just going to get funded for process, you’re going to get funded for performance.’ That is a big deal and that is a big shift,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo assailed the current budget process as well, in which school officials come to Albany each year to lobby for more money.
“We’ve gotten to a point where were spending more money per student than any other state in the nation and we’re in the middle of the pack,” he said. “And the whole culture of education in Albany is more money, more money, more money.”