Governor Cuomo appeared in Utica, Néw York. About 65 teachers and parents demonstrated outside as he held a press conference.
“Dozens of teachers and parents, carried signs in protest of the governor’s education policies, loudly chanting, “Cuomo’s plan has got to go!” outside MVCC.
“The teachers’ union is going to yell at me. I know. But that’s the only way you make change,” said the governor during his presentation.”
Here is Cuomo’s syllogism:
“All teachers’ unions are bad (they didn’t endorse my re-election)
All teachers in Néw York are union members
Therefore all teachers are bad”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
More Cuomo logic: “The teachers union says I don’t like teachers. I love teachers. My mother was a teacher. I love my mother.”
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While it’s more important to look at the interests served by Cuomo, it’s also clear that this is someone with serious Mommy and Daddy issues.
Not that we should care, except insofar as it might provide a helpful perspective in combatting him, but despite his bluster and bullying, is there perhaps a scared, angry little boy trapped and trying to escape from the mind of this monstrous man?
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With all due respect, Michael Fiorillo, so what? He is still a public servant who has sworn to uphold our state’s constitution and do his best for all NYS residents.
We don’t need a scared, angry little boy in Albany pushing everyone to the brink. Even his supporters and donors must know that.
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Sharon, try reading the opening sentences in each paragraph of my comment: I explicitly said that whatever personal issues our Reptilian Governor has are subordinate to the interests he serves (which are clearly not the public’s), and that it matters only insofar as it might provide a way to fight him and his patrons.
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Michael Fiorillo: I read your comments and appreciated the ideas. In grad school in an educational administration course we were assigned a biography of President Johnson and it was quite an eye opener for me at that time. (I’d have to look up the author — I forget which one)…. Rick Perlstein does this in his books also: I was reading the Goldwater book but then went back to re-read his Nixonland because it gives so many insights into character and the way these leaders live out their childhood themes. We do need to know this information; the idea of electing people without inner conflicts of some kind is not attainable so we need to understand more and then be able to act on what we understand in their leadership roles. That always baffled me in my working career ; I don’t mean we should dismiss the faults with excuses but knowing the truth is important when the political world is so full of hyperbole and “hero” ideals and we are basically not perfectible as humans or leaders.
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MF, I did read your post. Trying to understand the *deeper* psychological causes for Cuomo’s bullying behavior is pointless. Even if your speculations are correct, I don’t think they provide anything in the way of a useful strategy for fighting his toxic proposals.
I also don’t think labeling him “reptilian” serves much purpose either, fwiw.
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Sharon, Cuomo could play Gollum in the Hobbit. I daresay reptilian is an accurate description of the man. And his actions certainly are Gollum-Like. He’ll get his pretty…. at any cost.
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We should apply the same principles to Cuomo as we should with anyone with whom we disagree, or any child who behaves badly. Attack the ideas, not the person. Call out the behavior, not the whole child.
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Jean Haverhill,
You’re absolutely right: politicians are a fascinating sub-species to observe, and there is much to be learned from understanding their character and personal motivations, especially so in the case of world class pieces of work like LBJ and Nixon. Needless to say, the Reptilian Governor of the Empire State is not nearly as interesting or historically significant.
That said, it’s difficult to know where to draw the line at using character to explain a politician’s behavior, versus the economic and political interests at play during their administrations. In general, it’s almost always more useful to know who their major campaign contributors are, instead of how they got along with their daddy.
Psychoanalyzing pols is a sometimes interesting, sometimes nauseating exercise, but ultimately we have to look at their behavior and ask, “Qui bono”? In Cuomo’s case, that’s always pretty clear.
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Michael : unfortunately this is true ” In general, it’s almost always more useful to know who their major campaign contributors are, instead of how they got along with their daddy.” And, all I can say is there is fraud on both sides of the aisle. I keep hoping that some politico/politicians will survive the career path and keep their integrity (that I thought I saw at the beginning of a career)… But it seems that the temptations are too great what with the hype about technology being a miracle cure for everything, the corporate greed, and the profit incentives feed into the huge ego of a politician (as well as the pocketbook) and a lot of people like Rolex watches….. If the ego is humungous and there is no early sign of a conscience then I would hesitate to vote for a person. I would like to name one or two I believe have integrity but the career life span might not end up that way. Are you familiar with the book Citadel? That one was illustrative and written very well (about a doctor in England and the many the temptations along the w3ay).
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Now Sharon, what fun is that?
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OY! Twisted logic.
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Vomit!
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Here is Cuomo’s syllogism:
“All teachers’ unions are bad (they didn’t endorse my re-election)
All teachers in Néw York are union members
Therefore all teachers are bad”
So I guess my mom’s bad!
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Qui Bono, Cuomo?
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All students have teachers
What I’m trying to do is bad for students
Teachers are telling me it’s bad
Therefore All teachers are bad
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He supports labor unions, but in a purely theoretical way. Actual, existing labor unions where people speak and sometimes make demands are….icky and should be rolled over and destroyed.
He also supports “teacher voice” and “stakeholders at the table” except when they say something he disagrees with or otherwise get in the way of The Agenda.
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“By definition you cannot have 98% of the teachers as effective if the students aren’t. Thirty eight percent of the students are, but 98% of the teachers?” added Cuomo during an interview with press after the presentation.
Man, you can’t get much better logic than that except from either Georgie or Jebbie Bush.
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We know he hates teachers, but he must also really, really believe that NYS parents are stupid. He ignores us at his peril!
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Cuomo doesn’t care what parents, voters, future voters and teachers, who also might be parents and voters, think. He has four more years as the governor of NY, and for sure he is planning for a run at the White House or the U.S. Senate.
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Nice how he’s defined 62% of students as ineffective..
Weren’t we assured they wouldn’t label these kids failures as a result of the Common Core tests or use the scores for rank political hackery and the privatization agenda?
Oh, well. So much for that promise! Bring on the bashing!
There’s a phrase for this. Bad faith. He’s using those test scores to reach his personal political goal.
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Do the parents of 62% of the children in NY believe that their children are failures? If their children are failures does that mean that they are also failures?
Maybe they will begin to understand why the tests are specifically designed to place the ‘failure’ label on a majority of our children.
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Nothing gives a parent more pride than knowing that his child is effective.
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Imagine the bumper stickers for parent’s cars…
“Proud Parent of an Effective Student at Lincoln Middle School!”
Or a more in-your-face version…
“My Kid Is Effective, How ’bout Yours?”
School clubs could sell them for fund raising efforts to keep their public schools open, ya think?
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Teachers are rated “effective” etc. For students that would be “proficient” or “meets or exceeds expectations”.
Still, that would make excellent mocking bumper stickers.
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I had assumed the rhetoric of the “effective teacher” was a reform-era creation, or at least something that gained currency in the late 60s after the Coleman Report. But it seems to have really taken off in the 1950s. Courtesy of Google’s “Ngram Viewer”:
http://tinyurl.com/qf9ox75
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By now, pretty much everyone knows he is a royal arse. Do we think people are going to tolerate his nonsense much longer? I think not. He can’t admit he works for the 1%; but everyone knows it; and we outnumber the 1%. So let him force the tests, and let the parents opt out their kids, and then what can he do with his points of data? He may be joining Silver in as a cellmate anyhow. Good riddance to Cuomo. Maybe Sandra Lee can bake him a semi-home made cake with a file in it.
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“. . . he is a royal arse.”
Maybe those folks way back when who founded this country knew just a little about hereditary familial idiots and figured out it was best to set up a system of governance that eliminated hereditary authority.
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It is criminal how transparent it is how his backers stand to profit from this while it takes out a group he does not like.
What will hundreds of thousands of teachers do for work after he takes over their districts or has them fired?
And the local tax money goes to find all these charter operators who will send it out of state.
Even if teaching isn’t an employment program, if you enact this kind of vicious change it will have lots of side effects.
I don’t think improved schools will be the result.
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M,
If I may change your last sentence: “I KNOW THAT improved schools will NOT be the result.”
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It seems that the oligarchs feel this way too—especially the Waltons who pay many of their non-union employees poverty wages and are kind enough to hold workshops for them to learn how to apply for federal food stamps through SNAP.
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I just finished reading The New Yorker’s fluff piece on Andrew Cuomo: “The Albany Chronicles How Andrew Cuomo Gets His Way” by Jeffrey Toobin. (February 16, 2015)
Cuomo’s nutcase, vindictive plans to upend public education seemed to have been boiled down in the article to a quick aside: “Cuomo gave a speech last week promising (again) to tighten rules on legislators outside activities, but the culture of the capitol is notoriously resistant to change. Otherwise, Cuomo plans a strong push to remove failing public school teachers, a move that is opposed by unions (and their allies in the Working Families Party.)”
What crapola. Talk about lazy journalism. Yup, it’s about those failing public school teachers. I tossed the magazine on the couch then came over here to check Diane’s blog. At least I can find reality on here.
I guess part of Cuomo’s logic is that if he keeps bamboozling enough of the media he can get away with just about anything. That, and taking piles of corporate cash donations. Just simplify everything and count on enough reporters to do the same!
The gold watch Cuomo got on his 25th birthday, his weirdo basketball games with his father, “courting Kerry Kennedy”…. blah, blah, blah. Barf. Toobin asks some rhetorical questions about the Moreland Commission then just moves on….. And, did I miss something or was there no mention of the NY SAFE Act?
Meanwhile,as noted by this blog, teachers and parents this afternoon braved the harsh winter we’re living though, standing outside to protest Cuomo, our “mini-Nixon”.
At least that TV station in Utica had the backbone to cover the real story!
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Mario was logical, intellectual and inept.
Junior is one third of what his old man was.
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The last of the three, inept? 🙂
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And did you notice that the New Yorker printed precisely ONE letter to the editor concerning their article on Jeb Bush? Guess who wrote that letter: The president of the Center for Education Reform. Any surprise that the letter praised Jeb to the skies? I’m about to be done with the New Yorker at this rate. Disgusting, and depressing.
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Thank you, Fred: Cuomo Sr. was probably the most overrated politician of his era.
With the exception of vetoing the death penalty numerous times – a laudable and courageous thing, especially in that era – can anyone point to anything he actually did?
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Never underestimate the legacy power of a well-received, nationally televised speech.
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Is this the speech you refer to FLERP? I remember my discussions with my brother (he has been dead for 10 years now) ; it took place about that time when my brother was living near Poughkeepsie (my dad was born near Lake Placid)… I’m not defending the guy at all because I don’t know everything he did in New York. But there were some halcyon days in looking back and some of us entered the teaching profession at that time for example when Mark Shed was in CT, Gordon Ambach in NY , Greg Anrig in MA and I am glad I had the fortunate experience of learning of their work in education. Now that doesn’t mean I can defend everything that Cuomo ever did (especially because i didn’t live in New York)…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOdIqKsv624 1984 convention speech
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That’s the one.
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I’m showing my age, Michael Fiorillo, with this reference. “The Citadel is a novel by A. J. Cronin, first published in 1937, which was groundbreaking with its treatment of the contentious theme of medical ethics. It has been credited with laying the foundation in Great Britain for the introduction of the NHS a decade later.[1] In the United States, it won the National Book Award for 1937 novels. Cronin drew on his experiences practising medicine in the coal mining communities of the South Wales Valley Spethat he had researched and reported on the correlation between coal dust inhalation and lung disease in the town of Tredegar. He had also worked as a doctor for the Tredegar Medical Aid Society at the Cottage Hospital, which served as the model for the National Health Service.” Somehow I always assumed ethics in the medical profession and in educational profession but the ego today doesn’t seem to have the restraint of conscience? This is not truly off the topic of the list because we have a curriculum in schools and colleges that hopefully addresses the issues and themes. I remember when my brother was living in New York and I defended Cuomo sr. with my brother’s voting record for Patawki (spelling) and I remember Cuomo sr had studied Martin Buber … but again I’m showing my age because things seem to be very different now.
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more status cuomo.
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Ha! Like!
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My favorite NPR station is WAMC in Albany (I get to hear when I go visit the grandkids/families in NY). They treat what Cuomo says as a a “press release’….
I really like Alan Chartok and think he has done a reasonable job at WAMC and has kept alternative radio on stations…. But, in the most recent press releases WAMC read, they quoted Cuomo that there are “pedophiles ” in the NY teachers unions that have to be removed. The BADass teachers did some calling , emails, and other social media but they could really use some additional help. News has become just “press reading” and we are seeing this in Masschusetts when Pearson press reports are read out on NPR because they come through the Massachusetts Business Alliance. Keep up the voices; write to you senators, governors every possible avenue. Thanks for they many people who are doing this.
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Excellent point. The press release releases the press from the obligation to do anything more than circulate the PR.
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That’s what NPR really stands for: National Press Release
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NPR is a real chameleon:
NPR = National Pentagon Radio
NPR = National Propaganda Radio
NPR = National Presstitute Radio
NPR = National Pathetic Radio
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Never Pursuing Reality
Nefarious Phony Renditions
Newly Purchased Radio
Narrow Portrayal Reporting . . . . .
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Reblogged this on seldurio.
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It feels like Cuomo borrowed every bad idea in the reformers playbook and wants it all at once.
Even compromise would severely disturb the system
1) receivership – as seen in Bridgeport and Yorkville and practiced in Roosevelt NY with no success.
2) NY’s own TFA program to recruit the best college students with a 5 year commitment and loan forgiveness (unclear if it only applies to education majors)
3) close down teacher prep programs if a % of students don’t pass a licensing exam – this is some hybrid of high stakes testing and Arne Duncan’s plan to evaluate colleges
4) 50% of evaluation from VAM is an extreme version of nationally mandated policies…where 50% comes from I don’t know
5). Use of independent evaluator or SUNY prof for 35%…not sure where this comes from – but it remains to be seen where professors will find the time to observe tons of teachers…or the expertise to evaluate them. No one knows where these independent evaluators will come from…if they need to be paid we just created a whole new bureaucracy.
6) teacher tenure tied to student test scores with what sounds like a clock over 5 years that can.be reset with one ineffective. This sounds like something from Vergara with a twist of hardly anyone ever making it.
7) Fired over an accusation of misconduct – this sounds like something Campbell Brown wrote. If only Cuomo could be fired over mere suspicion.
8). Educational tax credit small enough to not move students into private schools but enough to give back to parents that already send theirs. This is from Florida and Louisiana. Capped for those with up to $250000 income..which doesn’t sound like all poor people to me.
What did I miss?
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Oh right, merit pay as practiced all over the country and having never worked anywhere…and apparently $20000 while a lot will almost never be paid out…there appears to be no budget allotment for this.
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He has to reduce the numbers of highly effective teachers if they are all going to get an additional $20 K. Every 50 highly effective educators will cost the taxpayers a cool million.
I dare say there are more than a few hundred highly effective teachers across New York State. Just counting his own hand-picked Master Teacher Program (disclaimer – i’m one of them) there would be over 500, costing the state some 10 million dollars.
That’s not much in the bigger scheme of things, but think what 10 million could do for a single school district, shorted by twice that amount over the last five years due to the GEA.
And of course he has to reduce the number of teachers rated highly effective or effective to maintain the canard that NYS schools are failing.
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M, did you mention the schools designed as failing could be taken over by the state? Was that the “receivership” This means having their entire staff fired, contracts broken, and new (presumably inexperienced) teachers hired. The one scres the crap out of me because my home district is like that.
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* Raising the cap on charter schools by 100.
* “Performance” evaluations enacted at all SUNY’s with an eye toward loss of funding if grads don’t land enough jobs. IMO, this is one of the more insane proposals.
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Re #8, how much would the tax credit be for? Catholic school tuition is not that high.
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There is a more basic problem with this. The nation has two national political parties, the democrats and the republicans, and I would have no problem with the emergence of a third, but I do not think that is likely. Republicans have fundamental beliefs which will tend to draw them into the destruction of public schools….we seldom hear them criticizing democrats for doing anything that gets in the way.
The basic problem….there is one political party which should be standing up to defend public education. Cuomo is not the only one……maybe worse than some…….but there has to be more political pressure on democrats to be democrats. In many ways….their behavior is worse than republicans…they are cashing in on irresponsible ideas being promoted by the right wing…..they need to be held “accountable”……and it should not take the creation of a greedy testing corporation to do that.
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.”but there has to be more political pressure on democrats to be democrats. In many ways…”
The only way you’re going to reach them is thru a state legislature. They have public schools in their districts.
I write my state legislator and list the schools in his district. I tell him I will tell as many public school parents as I can that he is not working for their public school. Show harm. List how his approach is harming existing public schools. You don’t have to go into principles or ideology or motives.
It is the one and only approach that gets their attention. They can’t hold those seats without public school supporters and parents. That’s just a fact, and they know it.
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that makes a lot of sense…..Chiara…thank you.
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Cuomo Logic: I think, therefore I VAM
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Very funny.
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Correction: “I DON’T think, therefore I VAM”
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Tago!
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10 thumbs up for SomeDAM Poet and Sharon in NYS both!
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Term limits would help end the madness in this country. Not entirely, but it’d be a start. Give ’em all 12 years max., then join the public sector.
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8 max!!
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I’ll go for 8. Got to get rid of these lifers.
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Hey Diane – It’s provocative when you’re feisty, but that is not a syllogism!
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Tim Sager,
Here is the classic syllogism:
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore Socrates is mortal.
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I’d love to know who his English teacher was.
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https://www.longislandadvance.net/articles/2015/02/05/Pat-Med-super-pokes-holes-in-governors-reform
Please read from a LI Superintendent
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