Jim Malatras, the director of state operations for Governor Cuomo in New York, recently sent a letter to Merryl Tisch, the chair of the state Board of Regents, and to the outgoing Commissioner of Education John King.
The letter asks a series of questions about the future direction of education in New York. It does not mention resources, because the Governor believes that New York spends enough or too much already. It does not mention resource equity, which is unfortunate, since New York has a highly inequitable funding structure. Nor does the letter mention poverty or segregation, which are known to be highly correlated with low test scores. Every standardized test shows a gap between haves and have-nots, but Mr. Malatras does not mention any action that might improve the life chances of children and families living in poverty. A recent report from the UCLA Civil Rights Project said that New York state has the most racially segregated schools in the nation, but that is not mentioned in this letter.
Please read the letter and feel welcome to offer your answers to the questions posed in it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We have to educate the population we have, not the population we wish we had.
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The Governor banned fracking the other day and prefaced it with: I’m not a scientist. Too bad he can’t apply that same train of thought regarding education in New York state. I’m not a teacher, educator, or an administrator but I’ll rely on those who really, really are.
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what a pompous ass. what is ineffectual is how the states and the federal government think that everything is the teachers’ fault. why not take a look at their tactics and their so-called reforms?
Although I do not live in NY, I am well aware that what has happened there is now beginning to take root in my own area. My state has suddenly become “enlightened” and begun getting ready to implement common core. Instead of fixing the funding problems (like combining small schools, or penalizing them for loss of students due to lack of needed resources, they believe that crappy “reforms” which restrict creativity are the answer. for once, we need them to place themselves in the teachers’ positions and try to utilize the resources they neglect to give.
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Everything parrots cuomo talking points. I love the last one – basically hand selection of the commissioner to the governor then invite voices of stakeholders. Like the PEP meetings in NYC, they love voices, so long as in the end they don’t need to listen to them.
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As one of those teachers from a”deplorable Buffalo priority school who has condemned a generation of kids to poor education and thus poor life prospects” I take great offense to Mr. Malatras’ comments. Our school is primarily failing because 70% of our students are ELLs who have arrived at our high school without the prior academics needed for success in high school. 30% of our students have little or no literacy in their primary language and many have never been in a school setting until they enter our 9th grade cohort. NYSED has consistently ignored their needs of first learning the English language, learning to read and acquire math literacy before they take the grade/subject level Regents exams. How about letting us provide our students with a strong foundation before condemning us as “bad” teachers because these students are unable to make the grade? In a school with about 800 students, we have been allocated a single reading specialist. Time and time again, research has shown that it takes 7 years for older students to master English and yet you (NYSED) have only allowed an extra year for our SIFE students to get up to speed in school. How about looking at how your unrealistic expectations have created poor life prospects, along with the poverty and inequity of financing our inner city schools that have contributed immensely to the problem?
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Pam – you are so right.
Your school is unique and it should be supported, not ostracized. The specific comments Cuomo has made about your school are reprehensible. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that refugees and other ELL students should be exempt from this testing, at least until they can master the language.
In addition, the majority of the Buffalo Public Schools are doing well. Some, such as City Honors, are exemplary. The options for students should be envied, such as schools emphasizing performing arts, culinary, gifted and talented, horticulture, finance, MST (math, science, technology), numerous vocational programs – some of them high tech. There are two high schools on College Campuses and one elementary school in the Buffalo Museum of Science. AP classes are taught in more than one building through Skype (if there aren’t enough students in one school to take the class) and there is a connection between local colleges where some courses are offered to our high school students, including an advanced math program starting in middle school.
The schools which are doing “poorly” are the neighborhood schools with high percentages of poverty and large percentages of minority students. These are the kids that don’t attend the “better” programs. Those leftover students that nobody wants. And even these schools have some good programs within them and also some good students (who are upset that their school is targeted). Turning these buildings into Charter Schools won’t change this status quo.
So four to five low performing schools make it look like the whole district is doing poorly (when their results are averaged in). That is not the case.
Anyone with any sense can see the problem. Finding the solution is the issue. Smaller class sizes and more support services is a start, but the children must also buy into the system. They have to want to learn. They have to attend school regularly, pay attention in class, and stop disrupting the teacher by talking (fighting, making noises, yelling out, etc.) in class.
The teacher isn’t the only player in this game.
Ellen T Klock
Retired School Librarian
Buffalo Public Schools
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I would advise the governor to stop the attack on public teachers. He should think before he makes insulting, demoralizing comments about the state’s public educators. He should realize that too much standardized testing is harmful, especially to the lowest performers, and is wasting valuable resources. All the sorting and ranking does not improve the outcome for our neediest students. There is no credible evidence that either the Common Core or VAM have any worth at all. The money would be better spent addressing issues of poverty for our neediest students, including before, after or summer school programs and outreach to parents.
I would like to see the governor support pilot programs in public schools to improve graduation rates in urban areas. He should also work change the school funding formula so that the neediest students get more resources to deal with the adverse impact of poverty by lowering class sizes and providing more staff and materials.
I would encourage the governor to better regulate charter schools. The original intent of charter schools was to provide innovative programs for under served groups. If a charter school is merely a business that makes money for a few at the expense of many, the charter should not be renewed. Current charters need more oversight. There should be more transparency regarding finances. Charters must be held accountable for how the money is spent, and there is too much fraudulent behavior.
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I was very surprised to read that New York has the most segregated schools in the nation. I taught in a diverse suburban district near NYC, and there are many other diverse suburban districts as well. I never realized there was such stratification in the state. I find this shocking! New York has an obligation to address this problem, We do better as a culture when we get to know people that are different from us. Children develop a better understanding of others by exposure to differences. Research has shown that poor children do better when they are educated among middle class children. We need to find creative ways to make this happen. Charters are even more segregated than public schools. We must do better!
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It’s the schools in the cities (such as Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, etc), that have large minority populations plus a major poverty issue, which have segregation issues. The surrounding suburbs tend to be more affluent and whiter. These are the “higher scoring” schools with those “better teachers” (vs the city teachers who are expected to do more with less). The less affluent suburbs, with higher rates of poverty and a larger concentration of minority students, don’t test as well.
If a school district is struggling to meet the challenge of the CCSS and assessments, they don’t want to “adopt” underperforming students from the nearby city into their schools (which was one suggestion). I’ll let you figure out why.
Ellen T Klock
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That’s why we need a collaborative rather than punitive solutions. Educators need the freedom to creatively address the problems, and the state should support rather than castigate their efforts.
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What a joke.
Cuomo wishes to stop demonizing teachers, and feels the opposite? Yet the first 3 points involve the ability to remove teachers: more ineffectives, more removals and a competency test! It’s beyond appalling. It’s beyond normal stupidity. Cuomo talks so often of money per pupil, and can never be honest and mention of the reality of urban blight and the failure of the state government to address the needs of the people rather than the millionaires and billionaires and their myopic ideas and attitudes
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It is clear that Cuomo would like to see a much harsher teacher evaluation system in NY and an even faster-tracked 3020A process. His desire for this is clear, has been stated numerous times, and couldn’t be more legible. VAM, random algorithms, or just plain magic….whatever you want to call it, the end object is the same: the end of organized teachers as a roadblock to large-scale privatization. This isn’t really a discussion about teacher evals, or education. It’s a political discussion about organized teachers in the state of NY. Period. When will we learn that disproving and rhetorically destroying ANY idea about reform, common core, VAM, whatever, DOESN’T MATTER! They are all covers and foils for the real object here, which is privatizing as much of the states public educational infrastructure, roles, and duties to corporate interests! That is the fight here and if we successfully disprove A, by morning they will have another bull$@!t B.
Now, some may ask how Cuomo can do this. Well, easy. Because he can. He has already successfully neutered NYSUT as a valid political entity with any meaningful gravity within the state. He has become the first democrat in the state to win and win again without NYSUT. He doesn’t need NYSUT’s 600,000 votes when he realized that an anti-teacher platform can easily make up the difference. He has moved strongly against teachers and he has done it with NYSUT’s please and thank you (NYSUT ostensibly supports common core and had a “seat at the table” for the teacher eval discussions awhile back that led to our current evaluation nonsense). He bet NYSUT would fumble and not have the stomach for a fight. He was correct. This has further neutered NYSUT on every level.
Next, there is a difference between the public (parent’s) distaste for testing and common core, and their potential level of engagement on teacher evals. He knows that for the most part, making teachers squirm and put under the same “private sector” levels of accountability actually poll well. He knows that the anti-testing parents and public anger probably won’t carry over to teacher evals. In a state where robust middle class employment is becoming more scarce, teachers often represent the only near-middle class in ALOT of communities. Cuomo banks on that hostility. Not everywhere is Westchester.
Finally, he just banned fracking. NY state progessives, like progressives nationally, are much more inclined towards identity-rights-enviro justice than towards economic justice (The old 30s lefty vs 60s lefty thing). Right now within the state Cuomo has a bit of a tailwind on his left. That’s always a good time to commit economic atrocities for a DINO. And make no mistake: that is the result here if he gets what he wants….ALOT of teachers departing the middle class.
So, the question: will he be successful? Yes, if NYSUT begs and pleads for another seat at the table so more damage can be done with their stamp of approval. Some things aren’t negotiable. But I guess ALOT of real important NYSUT folk disagree…historically anyway. It’s a good time for a DINO to hurt some folks.
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Actually, the Governor has just proffered an invitation for humble citizens like myself to apply to meet him on December 31 up in Albany. And, as soon as I heard about the “executive mansion open house”, I fired off my application to attend.
You, too, can apply if you happen to be in the Empire State as 2014 wraps up: https://www.governor.ny.gov/content/executive-mansion-open-house What a happy way to wrap up the holidays, spending a cheerful afternoon with the man nicknamed “The Prince of Darkness”
I’d love to give the little twerp a piece of my mind, face to face. Though given Cuomo’s past uncivil behavior (breaking promises and making threats, for example) maybe he won’t even be there at this own “Open House”? I can see it now….I gas up the car, drive two hours up to Albany and when I get to the front door there’s a note taped on the glass,,,, “Ha, Ha, fooled ya! Wait til you see how I’ll really screw ya next! Happy 2015”
I’m not sure why I had to include my license number and date of birth on the official online application? Maybe his crew is screening the applicants, looking for adoring fans. (Good luck finding those north of Yonkers!)
Hmmm. Who should I bring with me to your little feel good party? Zephyr Teachout?
Preet Bharara, the entire delegation of Democrats in the NYS Senate?
I’d pay to see Diane Ravitch walk in and rock that house.
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How about a double date for you – Zephyr AND Diane? : )
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I second to that motion, Christine.
it is worth to repeat and to remind all voters: educators and non-educators that:
“…given Cuomo’s past uncivil behavior (BREAKING PROMISES AND MAKING THREATS, for example), …”
I am sure that Governor Cuomo is convinced by his corporate backers’ support unconditionally regarding their wheeling-dealing with Tax payers’ public education fund, plus many more other “surprised business plans” in the dark. Is that how he earns his nickname as “The Prince of Darkness”? I am just curious about it.
Who will be “The Princess of Sunshine?”. Only that one can effectively advise “The prince of Darkness”. Seriously or RHEElly? Back2basic
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Dear Governor Cuomo,
It may come as a surprise to you, but a child’s education costs WHAT. IT. COSTS.
Teachers are not manufacturing widgets. They are working with entirely individual children who do not bring precisely the same experiences and knowledge to the classroom, who have widely various interests, talents, and accomplishments, who have diverse learning styles, and who will progress and develop in different directions and at different rates during the course of a school year.
And when you mix all of that together, you get the proper conclusion that cannot squeeze narrow ranges of performance out of them, and you cannot force teachers to shove them into those ranges by declaring teachers “ineffective” as if this is a clear input and output model of production.
Some children, rightfully, require a lot more input. A high school student enrolled in all AP classes is going to cost more than a student in college preparation classes because of the small class sizes. An early elementary student with dyslexia is going to cost more than peers because of the need for intervention. A student who is an English Language Learner is going to cost more because of the need for additional instruction and teachers. Students in communities with high levels of poverty SHOULD cost more than students in other communities because of the need to embed more services in the schools that are lacking elsewhere in the community.
But there is no acknowledgement of this in Albany where education funding formulas have been consistently manipulated and subjected to accounting gimmicks like the Gap Elimination Adjustment. The New York State School Boards Association estimates that the average school district in NY has had to make due with 3 million dollars a YEAR less than in previous budgets due to the GEA. Dr. Bruce Baker of Rutgers University estimates that changes to base funding formulas have cost New York City alone between 3-4 thousand dollars PER STUDENT PER YEAR under the Cuomo budgets.
Combined with the property tax cap, this means schools have been STARVING ever since the federal stimulus money ran out.
Meanwhile, the Cuomo/Tisch/King education priorities have sucked more and more of district school budgets into testing, test preparation, and evaluation of teachers via measures that have no research and statistical basis.
You don’t save a drowning man by throwing him a bunch of rocks just because you don’t want to spend money on a life preserver. But Cuomo/Tisch/King are the perfect example of what David Berliner said when he observed that we cannot demand accountability from teachers and schools in a fashion that is entirely one way. A valid school reform plan would ask more of schools and teachers while simultaneously pouring resources into those schools and the classrooms where teachers teach. We know that Cuomo/Tisch/King have no interest in that — when Mayor DeBlasio announced that he planned to spend over 100 million dollars to give struggling schools in NYC 3 years to turn around, Chancellor Tisch told him he had three months before she would start moving to close those schools.
So you want to know what can be done about “bad” teachers in “deplorable” districts? Why don’t you start by seeing what those teachers and districts could do if you actually gave them what they NEED, regardless of cost, to work with their specific student populations?
I know that might mean that Chancellor Tisch and the other people in her circle of billionaires might have to make due with a smaller percentage of income gains in our society, but THAT is what it takes to BUILD a commons in society. You figure out what it costs and then YOU SPEND IT.
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