Cuomo Still Holding School Budgets Hostage over Teacher Evaluation Law

Stay classy, New York. 

In news more inevitable than Donald Trump dick jokes, school districts across New York State have soundly rebuked Governor Andrew Cuomo's latest teacher evaluation law (3012-d). Look no further for evidence of this than one year ago, when 250,000 parents refused to subject their children to tests designed to fire middle-class workers.

And though Cuomo and others would like you to believe that his bogus "Common Core Task Force" fixed everything, absolutely nothing has changed--including the law. Districts must still abide by the most pernicious aspects of Cuomo's plan. These include, for instance, having ass clowns in Albany instead of working educators determine whether or not students possess enough "college and career readiness" to keep their schools open or their teachers employed. Welcome to the idiocracy.  

Schools will also still administer the same tests Cuomo recently called "meaningless", along with yet another test that will be used to rate their teachers.  

Any district seeking to protect itself from the Lobbyist for the Student's asinine law will lose millions in funding. Immersed in his usual sleaze, Cuomo is offering bribes to imbibe his bile.

Districts who fail to strip teachers of more job security by July 1 can say goodbye to whatever aid Albany planned to provide them. Already faced with a crippling tax cap that inhibits help from within their own communities, superintendents everywhere must choose between a thousand cuts or decapitation.

Regardless, Cuomo is still determined to "break" public education; neither his laws nor his ego have lessened since last year. Add to this a devotion to deep-pocketed donors and the blurred lines between hubris, greed, and bad public policy once again come into focus.  

Heavy-hearted legislators who held their noses and voted for Cuomo's ludicrous law last year must breath the air of good sense if they expect to have any credibility on public education again.

It is immoral to tie lives to a law which no sane person can faithfully justify or defend.

Take the Board of Regents, for example, the unpaid group tasked with implementing the law. The outcry over Cuomo Core has swiftly put three Regents out to pasture, including chancellor Merryl Tisch--as complicit as Cuomo in the attacks on schools. Working the unworkable is the definition of absurdity, after all, especially on a volunteer's salary.      

Lawmakers must lighten their hearts and thicken their spines if they expect resistance to their malfeasance to end. They can start this process by listening to those who know our kids better than most: actual educators.