This is a very funny video. First you see Governor Andrew Cuomo, who plans to enrich the testing industry by testing everyone who works or enrolls in a school. He is a huge supporter of charter schools, having received millions of dollars in campaign funds from charter advocates on Wall Street. Charter students are 3% of the students in New York state.
Then you will see two key supporters of charters, both leaders in the New York state senate, which is controlled by Republicans. Neither has any charters in their districts. They represent Long Island, where parents are passionate about their public schools, where the graduation rate is far higher than that of the state, and where the anti-testing movement has a large following. These state senators don’t want charters in their districts, but would be happy to see more charters elsewhere. What is also ironic is that Albany, the state capitol, closed two charter schools just weeks ago for financial and academic failures.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It figures. The most ignorant are pushing the charter agenda.
It is essentially institutional racism. The best way to do with the kids testing lowest….find a way to make profits on them from a distance.
I recently sat in the office of newly elected State Senator Susan Serino with several other teachers. She is ignorant on education issues in general but sits on the education committee. She talked about how, even though we don’t have a the threat of charter schools in the mid-hudson valley at present, it sure was good that charter schools were able to save some of the children from failing public schools down in the city. When I asked her why she thought schools were failing in neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx she didn’t have an answer. When I asked her if it was OK that only some children were being “saved” while others were left behind, she said “yes, better some than none.
I don’t understand the mind-set that would allow a few children to attend well funded schools while the children most in need, who might be more difficult and costly to teach, are thrown away.
She did agree that communities should have local control over their schools, so perhaps she is open to learning.
It just dawned on me that charter schools are a way for politicians of wealthy districts to feel like they are doing something for those poor kids in failing schools without calling for equitable funding which would affect their districts.
OPC, OPC, OPC, OPC, OPC, OPC, OPC . . . This plays in these politician’s minds like a hamster who cannot get off the tread wheel. The faster you go, the more you get nowhere.
What’s good for the overclass is not good for the underclass . . . .
My state legislator ran on some meaningless free market ed reform slogans but he was careful to exclude the actual existing public schools in his actual existing district from his privatization crusade.
They can’t really run against the public schools in their districts, It’s one thing to bash “government schools” in the abstract, it’s another to bash a list of (named and specific) public schools they (supposedly!) represent,
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
You can’t make this stuff up. Skelos is in my district where Buris can do circles around him yet he touts this nonsense. I challenge him to allow a charter to open up in Rockville Centre-the parents would go bats*^t
Skelos and Flanagan both represent relatively affluent districts. New York charter school law requires charters to serve at-risk students. If Skelos and Flanagan were advocating for charters in other districts while fighting them in their own, that would be newsworthy, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Being a state legislator frequently involves taking an interest in and even initiating legislation on issues that don’t directly relate to one’s own district.
I think that a far more curious recent development in New York is “progressive” mayor Bill de Blasio’s linking arms with former Republucan mayor (and renowned dog-whistler) Rudy Giuliani to lobby for undemocratic mayoral control to be made permanent in New York City. The lack of outrage about this alliance, and what it is asking for, is . . . interesting. “Follow the money,” right?
Tim, the issue of mayoral control is not a “follow the money” question. De Blasio gets no money from mayoral control, neither did Bloomberg. It is a governance question. I am not opposed to mayoral control but the law should include checks and balances, as it does not now. We currently have a form of mayoral dictatorship. Members of the NYC Board of Education should have set terms, they should not serve at the pleasure of the mayor. I will write about this.
The lack of outrage from the usual suspects is 100% a “follow the money” issue. Where are the UFT, AQE, and all the rest?
I am disappointed to read that you support mayoral control. What sort of checks and balances would actually work? Why can’t New York have a democratically elected school board like (almost) everywhere else?
I’ll wait to read what you write, but it seems like giving appointed board members set terms could result in a situation where board members are unaccountable to the mayor that appointed them, the people who voted for the mayor, and the communities whose schools are affected by board policy.