Memo to New Yorkers: Watch What Cuomo Does, Not What He Pretends To Do

New York lost a labor legend this week with the death of Thomas Kavunedus, one of the few who many can thank for keeping contracts current whenever ass clowns from Albany decide to wreak havoc on middle class workers. 

Kavunedus, a retired member of the Lakeland Federation of Teachers (LFT), spent 16 days in jail in 1977 during the longest teachers strike in state history. Most credit Kavunedus and seven other imprisoned members of the LFT for helping to bring the Triborough Amendment to New York State--a law which maintains salaries and job protections for workers if and when contracts expire.

Without the Triborough Amendment, lives and livelihoods could be shredded along with hard-fought contracts, with people held at the mercy of politicians and plutocrats who've made a sport of blaming economic downturns on "greedy" public servants.  

While the passage of his draconian teacher and school evaluation plan puts Governor Andrew Cuomo on the warpath against the Triborough Amendment, many unions outside of education do not seem to care...yet.

Union leaders of all stripes should seethe at Cuomo's blatant disregard for local, collectively-bargained work rules via his asinine "reforms" imposed on school districts across the state.

In addition to teachers, Cuomo's plan also subjects nurses, custodians, and cafeteria workers--to name a few--to even more job insecurity and uncertainty, as schools in receivership will likely be run by proteges of Wisconsin Governor and Cuomo's brother-from-another-mother Scott Walker.

Worst of all, Cuomo Core will wield standardized tests to pollute and uproot bountiful learning environments for our kids and communities.        

Speaking of labor leaders who should care, consider Patrick "Blood on the Steps of City Hall" Lynch, President of the Patrolman's Benevolent Association (PBA).

Though thousands of New York City cops list teachers as family members, Lynch recently awarded Cuomo the PBA's "Man of the Year" award. It seems Lynch condones Cuomo's destruction of public education as long as Cuomo throws him a plastic bone now and again.

For example, Cuomo says cops should be paid more while while doing absolutely nothing about it. In fact, Cuomo has worked harder to pay public servants less than he has to pay them more. 

Consider also Cuomo's proposal to raise the minimum wage, yet another reason to watch what Cuomo does, and not what he pretends to do.

With a $15 minimum enacted for fast-food workers by another Cuomission, the Fight for Fifteen is over for Cuomo; he can now claim that at least fast-food workers got a raise if and when his proposal goes down in a hail of more tax cuts for his billionaire buddies.

Cuomo's playing with house money on the minimum wage, after all, and his donors will still benefit while McDonald's cashiers are replaced by iPads.

The death of Thomas Kavunedus should remind us--yet again--of where we've been, and where we're headed.

Labor needs leaders like Kavunedus--now more than ever--to fight for its life and legacy. 

                                                      

Leaders Alter the Optics of Opt Out, Steer Clear of Solutions

 

As much as people may not like testing, it’s the only way available for us to document and to hold schools and school districts accountable. We can’t close the achievement gap unless we know what it is and where it is and how big it is.  

 Marc Morial 

 President, National Urban League   

Testing is the only way to hold schools accountable?

 

That’s like saying the only way to keep your car running is to glance at its gauges . But what if the gauges malfunction or break? What if your check engine light means only that you forgot to tighten your gas cap again? What if your seat belt sensor is set off by a box of books?

 

Much like cars, many problems in public schools are difficult to diagnose. And though learning is more complicated than your car's cooling system, proponents and pushers of standardized tests are desperate to deduce it to a number in order to justify their self-serving schemes.

 
Parents, students and teachers across the nation are passengers in a turbocharged testing machine with a broken speedometer which will soon round narrow, rocky ledges. Airbag lights may finally have a good reason to turn on as more and more public schools plummet into privatization.  

In order to gauge learning  or determine how well our teachers and schools are running  many variables must be considered, all of which have zero to do with standardized tests . If it's unsafe and expensive to leave our car at the mercy of its gauges, then it’s immoral to leave our schools at the mercy of tests.         

Unfortunately, when inspecting our schools, instead of looking under the hood and kicking the tires, our leaders continue glancing at the gauges. 

 

Speaking of lame lemons, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently doubled downed on deform, hoping a thesaurus might help convince himself and others that test scores are also the only way to hold teachers and schools “accountable.”  Like Jeb Bush, Duncan is loathe to utter the words Common Core these days, for example, and has even found a synonym for high-stakes tests, referring to them as “student learning” in a recent interview.  

 

Replace the words “student learning” with "testing" and Duncan's infatuation with high-stakes tests rings clear:

I think having some connection between teacher evaluations and student learning testing makes sense. The goal of all great teachers is to make kids learn. But for folks to say there should be no connection between teacher evaluation and student learning testing I think actually demeans the profession.

Note that Duncan says the opposite of what over 200,000 New Yorkers (and counting) believe. Testing actually demeans the teaching profession.  

As the interview continues, Duncan finally trots out the word "testing", albeit shrouded in lies and equivocation:   

I think on the kids' side, there has been too much testing where there's duplikative [sic] tests, or redundant tests, or too much time doing test prep. That makes no sense. Part of what we're asking Congress to do in the fix of No Child Left Behind is to put a cap on what states can do in terms of testing. And the vast majority of testing is not coming from the federal level—it's coming from the state and local level. I do think it's important for kids to be tested annually.

It’s laughable that Duncan blames the metastasis of tests on the states, when anyone who can see Donald Trump's hairline knows that the federal government has clearly used No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top to force states into accepting the test-and-punish regimes entrenched today.

 

Duncan and others are also desperate to change the optics of Opt Out so that fewer parents join a movement which exposes and threatens to topple the privatization of public education.

 

Sadly, Duncan, the National Urban League, and even the New York State Department of Education (NYSED) are also still spinning cynicism, suggesting that affluent (rich and white) parents in the suburbs are somehow robbing inner-city (poor and black) children of a sound education by Refusing the tests.  NYSED's characterization of students who opted out as being "mostly white" from "low-need" schools who performed poorly last year eerily echoes Duncan's infamous "white suburban moms" comment from two years ago.

Perhaps former New York State Education Commissioner John King, who now works for Duncan in Washington, can tell us if he agreed with Duncan's ignorant intimations about Opt Out all along. Yes, John King is forgotten but not gone from the annals of New York education deform.

Maybe King could also investigate what the hell is going on in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, and finally get to the bottom of whether or not it was, as Duncan callously claimed at the time, "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans."

   

If tests are not the answer, skeptics will ask, then what is?

 

How do we rescue all kids from disillusion and degradation?

In other words, if its gauges are broken, how will we know which parts of the car need maintenance?

Since it seems education deformers treat windshield wiper warnings more seriously than most, perhaps they can assist in devising a formula to measure our schools that does not include test scores as a factor.

This formula will require our best and our brightest  schooled in the intricacies of Boron  who don't waste their time blogging.

 

The formula must include MANY variables to determine whether schools are succeeding or failing.

 

Below, The Pen is Mightier than the Person is pleased to offer eleven variables, adapted from Diane Ravitch's groundbreaking book Reign of Error, that could be used in this formula. And instead of calling the product a value-added measure (VAM), which sounds too much like a failed coupon campaign, we'll call it a Ravitch-added measure (RAM), much more valid than any multiple-choice test:

 

Ravitch-added Measures (RAM) of a 

Highly-Effective School:

      1. Is access to pre-natal care in your district free and convenient? If the answer is NO, your school's RAM will not be affected.  
      2. Is access to daycare and/or pre-school in your district free and convenient? Once again, your school's RAM will not be affected if the answer is NO.
      3. How diverse is your school’s curriculum? How many art, English, and music electives do you offer, for example? Extra-points will be added to your RAM for any physical education electives.
      4. Does your school have small classes? This is one of the easiest variables to measure. Let’s cap classes at 20. The lower your average class size, the higher your RAM.
      5. All charter schools within your district must be fiscally transparent, and PROVE they are not manhandling money. They must accept all students and also not discourage their faculty and staff from joining unions. Any infractions related to funding and/or the rights of students and workers will lead to an automatic revocation of their charter. Should corrupt charter schools be identified as operating within your district, however, your school's RAM will not be affected. 
      6. Are medical and social services widely available in your district? Once again, your school's RAM will not be affected if the answer is NO. 
      7. How much does your school embrace teacher-designed tests and lessons? The more autonomy teachers possess, the higher your RAM. Merit pay (yes, merit pay) could even be awarded to teachers who take extra classes for enrichment. Teachers could even be paid for uploading lessons and assessments to a state-run website which other teachers could access for ideas, free-of-charge. Let’s pay teachers $20 per lesson and go from there.
      8. Do 100% of the teachers in your school hold a teaching certificate? Do 100% of the administrators have at least 10 years of experience in the classroom? Any numbers lower than these will lower your RAM. Experienced administrators, by the way, know good teaching when they see it, and therefore will not need trumped-up charges and test scores to remove tenured teachers.  
       9. If your district is not controlled by an elected school board, your RAM will be lowered. After all, what would people say if one person controlled the United States government?   
       10. What efforts are being made by agencies within your district to reduce racial segregation and poverty? Little or no proof of these efforts will not affect your RAM. 
       11. Does your school recognize that public education is a public responsibility? As evidence of this, your school must produce an annual portfolio   created by teachers, administrators, parents and students   which documents how your school positively impacts the community. Examples of this might include fundraisers, attendance at plays and sporting events, and scholarships awarded to students by local groups and businesses.  

Implementing RAM will be expensive and require diligence, no doubt, but cities and states can no longer afford to shun their schools. Besides, who could deny aid to a school whose RAM is stagnant due to timid attempts by the community to reduce poverty and racism?

New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie is example of a politician who might consider adopting RAM. Overwhelmed by his bullying and bullshit, Heastie and other heavy-hearted legislators let Governor Andrew Cuomo have his way in this year's budget, and only threw gasoline on the Opt Out Movement when they voted to strip teachers of due process rights in the name of test scores.

If his recent statements are any indication, however, Assemblyman Heastie may have at last come to his senses about education, finally talking the talk:

I really think that we shouldn't be looking at education alone anymore or mental health alone anymore or poverty alone anymore. I think that we have to look at the total family structure and see why it is that students are going into school not prepared for these challenges. And I think a lot of it has to do with what's going on at home and their neighborhoods. Even super teacher may not be able to get through to a student whose life outside of school has issues.
                         Carl Heastie (D-NY)
                         August 17,2015

If Heastie and other legislators are finally prepared to walk the walk toward educational justice, people will join them.  

And unlike Cuomo and Duncan's plans, they won't have to RAM it down their throats.  

 

Not a sham.

Education and Incarceration in the Brave New Nation

In a 1949 letter to George Orwell, Aldous Huxley wrote:

Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.

More prescient words have rarely been written.

Though nothing new, the kindness and cruelty our leaders use to persuade the populace is maturing into something frightening these days in the United States, where it rages like bi-polar twins at a family reunion.

Thanks to the Citizens United decision, the same billionaires who own the Big Banks and Big Media also own the politicians, and Huxley's "instruments of government" drip from drums of tear gas and glossy political ads.

Government officials around the country wave diseased olive branches and dollars in the face of the Opt Out Movement, for example, while sharpening arrows for anyone on the streets after dark.

In New York State, newly-minted education commissioner and Mrs. Doubtfire’s sister-from-another-mister MaryEllen Elia thinks parents and communities just don’t understand why the state must continue clubbing our kids and their schools with inane standardized tests.  The commissioner believes people can still fall in love with tests whose sole purpose is to enrich plutocrats on the sweat of students and middle-class workers.  The unelected Elia holds an olive branch in one hand and a fist in the other, threatening to coax people into submission if she cannot cajole them first.

With the number of students refusing to take the federally-mandated tests quadrupling in one year, the commissioner, Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, and even Governor Andrew Cuomo have to realize that the horses are out of the barn, but they will try—at least for now—to corral them using the pricey tools of public relations instead of the tools of incarceration. Charlatans like Jeremiah "I'm not an Educator" Kittredge from Families for Excellent Schools and Jenny Sedlis from StudentsFirstNY, for instance, will continue spewing forth commercials promoting Cuomo Core and fraudulent vulture charter schools.       

Try as they may, NYSED will not sweep away the Refuse movement.

Speaking of Cuomo and incarceration, the governor and other leaders for that matter have been silent about tactics within the state's prisons that would make Dick Cheney blush.  A recent report in The New York Times details what took place at the Clinton Correctional Facility in the aftermath of the infamous escape of two convicted murderers, when officials allegedly tried to beat information out of inmates, and yes, even threatened to waterboard them if they didn't comply.  

To make matters worse, during his jaunt through the jail, the Lobbyist for the Students was filmed talking to an inmate, and punctuated his monologue with his "best tough-guy stare", according to the inmate. 

Just hours later, the same inmate was handcuffed and bludgeoned in a broom closet by guards who wore no name badges.

"Right this way, sir."

When someone is tortured shortly after the state's most powerful elected leader stared him down, in the words of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, "that's not going to be good for anybody." 

Contrary to the whims of groups like the National Urban League—who recently gave Cuomo an award for “leadership in criminal justice reform", ordinary Americans face heavy-handed, heavily-funded efforts by Cuomo and others for opting out and speaking out.

And while Cuomo may be proud of shutting down some of the prisons his father opened, it didn't stop him from recently shutting down the mouth of activist Allen Roskoff. Roskoff, President of the Jim Owls Liberal Democratic Club, was arrested for disrupting an event where Cuomo received another bogus award, this time for his "progressive leadership."

Evidently, modern progressivism entails attacking public education and the First Amendment, among other things.

Roskoff ( 2nd from l.) was even more shocked to end up in a blue and white.  

Across the country, bullies abound. But they are not merely confined to buses and school locker rooms. They also lurk in state houses and corporate boardrooms, quick to shove verdicts and public policies down people's throats before they even smell them.

It is a lust for power like no other, since the technology of today is like no other. Huxley's "infant conditioning" and "narco-hypnosis" come standard on iPads and in bottles of prescription pills, after all.

And it is also not surprising that Commissioner Elia vows the tests will be embraced once they're computerized; technology has a knack for lulling many into submission.

And if they can't lull us into submission, they'll beat us.
 

On the Road to Receivership

A recent $8.5 million donation to Evil Moskowitz’s torture chambers charter schools by billionaire hedge funder John Paulson is a mere bubble amid the tsunami of Big Money careening toward public education in New York State. It’s doubtless Paulson would have donated at least twice that amount had Andrew “I am the Government” Cuomo not failed to enrich Paulson and other Wall St. wankers via another one of his tax-cuts-for-billionaires bills.  

Alas, the Lobbyist for the Student’s dubiously-dubbed “Parental Choice in Education Act” did not even come to a vote, though Cuomo did manage to slip a few more charter schools for his slimy associates into Albany’s putrid package of legislation. Cuomo continues to “get things done” by ramming through ludicrous laws before most legislators even have a chance to put their reading glasses on.   

Contrary to what The New York Times says, Paulson’s donation will not cause New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio additional angst in accommodating Moskowitz’s schools—Cuomo already carved out space for them in the state budget through seemingly unrelated legislation.

Under a new “school receivership” law encased in the budget, Moskowitz and other public school predators are now clear to subsume “failing” schools within one year, kicking union contracts and our most vulnerable kids to the curb. After all, neither Moskowitz nor Paulson’s money will tolerate low Cuomo Core test scores. Kids who happen to struggle because their parents are destitute, disabled or dead will be out of luck; rather than fitted for a charter school uniform, they will be promised all the knowledge in the world via asinine online classes on a refurbished iPad. 

The good news is that many intelligent people understand that test scores do not define children, or teachers for that matter. Paulson and other education misanthropists should remember this the next time they agonize over the worthlessness of their worth and attempt to live vicariously through other people's kids. It’s not our fault that Paulson decided to become a billionaire and now needs another reason to exist besides money. Perhaps his fortune would be better spent saving lions in Africa. 

Billionaire John Paulson is now in the market for a soul

Awash in ignorant hubris, Paulson’s beneficence also helps destroy those precious middle-class jobs politicians like to tout, as the faculty and staff in charter schools have less job security than a drunken babysitter. Yes, public schools are similar to corporations in that they also provide jobs to the community, jobs politicians from both parties are desperate to downgrade.

Fortunately, more people are paying attention. One of the largest acts of civil disobedience took place this year in New York when over 200,000 ordinary citizens decided they would refuse to allow their kids to participate in Andrew Cuomo’s greedy and vindictive quest to destroy their schools with standardized tests. This number will only increase next year as more people start to realize that the road to receivership is paved with low test scores. If Moskowitz and others continue to get their way, this road will soon crisscross the state, with hundreds of schools labelled as “failing” and in need of a Paulson donation.

Besides an attempt at fumigating college readiness standards that are more toxic than Chernobyl on a windy day, the state’s only answer for the Refuse movement will be to intimidate and punish any teacher suspected of supporting the uprising. Cuomo’s Orwellian “moral character” law contained in the budget is clearly meant for this purpose, as our sociopathic leader’s definition of immorality pertains to anyone who challenges his ego. How many teachers, for example, will the state try to railroad out of the profession because they "like" a status on Facebook?

History shows, however, that people don't digest force-fed injustices very well, especially ones that include children and hard-working teachers as their ingredients.

Paradoxically, injustice also breeds solidarity, and it is now the job of everyone who cares about public education—from bus drivers to board members—to coalesce around the Refuse movement. Refuse the road to receivership by refusing the tests.

It is the only way to save our schools from the clutches of strife.

Calling the Hillary Clinton Question

Pay attention, teachers. 

To the exasperation of workers everywhere, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) suddenly voted to endorse former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for U.S. president. Though the union made a similarly timed endorsement of her in 2008, this year's bow to Clinton has a growing number of members questioning its motivation. After all, there are enough people currently running for president to fill a school bus, and the destruction of public education has so far received less Big Media scrutiny than Donald Trump's hairline.

Much of the vitriol for the Clinton endorsement is justifiably directed at AFT president and Hillary backslapper Randi Weingarten. Rather than use the election to galvanize 1.6 million educators around issues that matter to lives and livelihoods, Weingarten prematurely called the question, strong-arming teachers into campaigning for a woman whose biggest donors expect her to attack labor unions and public education.

Clinton is a former U.S. senator from New York and big fan of Governor Andrew Cuomo, a neoliberal ass clown who has eviscerated due process rights for teachers in his state while simultaneously underfunding and overtesting students and their schools.

Clinton condones Cuomo

Weingarten is also close to Clinton, and this hasty endorsement appears as nothing more than nepotism run amok. Though she would follow Clinton to the Hamptons and back, the same cannot be said of many of her members. 

Weingarten claims this endorsement was pushed by union leaders in swing states, but Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has drawn bigger crowds than anyone in those states, and don't think that a teacher or twenty in the crowd does not nod whenever Sanders speaks of removing the influence of Big Money from politics, for example. 

The conviction that Clinton will easily win the democratic nomination so we might as well support her plays on our most superficial and cynical political paradigms; inevitability builds tyrants, not leaders. Similar to Barack Obama in 2008, Hillary clearly views Sanders as a threat to her inevitability, and has reached out to her friend Randi to dam his progressive tide. 

Clinton has no credibility in the fight against Big Money in politics, however, unless and until she decides to offer Eli Broad and Bill Gates a refund. As a result, should Clinton receive the nomination, campaign finance will merely graze the stratosphere of the presidential debates, with both the moderators and candidates obsessing over psychos on the other side of the world instead of the corporate sociopaths along our shores.

Education will likely also receive its usual brusque treatment in 2016, since it will be in the best interests of both major parties to disregard the plutocrats behind the curtain. If Clinton wins the nomination, vital debate about issues such as Common Core and high-stakes tests will be tempered by phrases like "Education reform is a bipartisan issue" and "Let's agree to disagree on that one." In the meantime, public education will sink further into oblivion, ignored in favor of nonsensical arguments about deleted emails and the constitutionality of health care and marriage. 

Randi Weingarten has a lot of work to do if she expects the AFT to work for Hillary Clinton.

Bernie Sanders is a successful and seasoned senator, former congressman and mayor. He is not going away soon.  

If anything, the AFT 's endorsement of Clinton will only stoke the fires of Bernie's campaign, with working teachers everywhere poking its embers.

It will be up to Weingarten and others to tamp down the flames of dissent and disgust engulfing corporate Clinton.

Teachers Know Nothing About Politics

So says New York Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan.  

In a recent interview, the chair of the assembly’s education committee bemoaned the ignorance of educators, conflating their angst over laws levied against their livelihoods with their Albany naiveté:

"Sometimes I wish teachers would have a better grasp of the political process. Since Race to the Top, we’ve talked about teacher evaluation [sic] every year because we were sort of forced to by Race to the Top."                                                                  
                  Catherine Nolan (D-NY)
                  June 16, 2015

Though New York’s Race to the Top money evaporated high above the Catskill Mountains before any drops could trickle into classrooms, Nolan lamely implies that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will soon stride into schools across the state and ask for his money back if more teachers aren’t fired. 

When asked about her bill to inform families about abusive state tests, Nolan pivoted to Duncan’s infamous “white suburban moms” comment, blaming her legislative inaction on some federal monster stalking her in the gloom.

It should surprise no one, however, that Duncan does indeed resemble Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, ready to suffocate your child's school with douchebaggery:     
                                                                                  

Nolan proceeded to praise the “continuing process” of Albany—a state government which has historically been as fluid as a vial of horse manure. The careers of educators everywhere apparently now cling to the calves of leaders like Nolan, who three months ago voted to demolish teacher tenure while hitting our kids on their heads with mallets patented by Pearson.

Sadly, Nolan understands education about as much as teachers understand politics, yet parents, teachers and students suffer when ignorant assholes like Andrew Cuomo pass laws on behalf of billionaires.

When asked specifically about the teacher evaluation law she voted for—which includes a convoluted and clunky “matrix” to determine a teacher’s overall rating—Nolan would only say that she supports the seven six members of the Board of Regents who publicly rejected the ludicrous law.

If only Nolan agreed with the dissident Regents before she decided to enshrine the source of their rebellion into law.  

Though politics is a convenient scapegoat, Nolan and others must understand the educational process before surrendering to the political machine. Bad laws are worse than no laws, and take much longer to repeal. New York teachers will likely wait longer than prohibition before getting tenure back, for instance, and the opt-out movement balances on the border of oblivion, its fate likely residing in the Supreme Court.

If Race to the Top is truly to blame for Cuomo's quest to destroy public education, then New York teachers can expect even less help from Nolan should someone like Wisconsin Governor and Alfalfa's brother from another mother Scott Walker win the White House next year. Walker is determined to crush organized labor from the federal perch, and heavy-hearted, spineless democrats like Nolan will scurry beneath boulders if and when Walker assumes office.  After all, if politicians can’t stand up to their own party, they cannot be expected to stand against other parties.  

  

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is not as innocent as he looks

Though teachers may not fully understand politics, they are at least starting to stand up for political change within their own union.

At NYSUT’s annual representative assembly in Buffalo last month, it was standing-room only at the inaugural meeting of Stronger Together, a union caucus formed last year to counteract the kowtowing complacency of NYSUT's current leadership. ST caucus seeks to engender an inclusive, proactive union, a union that hopes to see the train's headlights before tasting its wheels. 

NYSUT passed ST caucus-authored resolutions at the RA, for example, which denounce the Common Snore standards and their inane tests, and the UFT's Michael Mulgrew punched no teacher in the face.

Teachers union thugs in Buffalo

ST caucus will also help remind the public that although teachers may not fully grasp the realities of the political process, they do grasp its potentials, and know that a wise and just society does not place process over product.

New York's political process has left its schools with a rotten product, however, and Cathy Nolan and others seem okay with that, for now. 

Don't worry, teachers...the next legislative session is right around the corner...

Cuomo’s Budget Enflames Massive Opt-Out Movement in New York

In the midst of a maniacal quest to conquer his “opponents” in the state’s teachers union (NYSUT), New York Governor Andrew Cuomo may have single-handedly quadrupled the number of children who will Refuse to take federally mandated Common Core tests this month. Cuomo forgot that many teachers are also parents, and can easily smell the shite of a teacher evaluation plan that will further subject their children and communities to the will of flawed tests designed by profit-hungry corporations.

Though the Lobbyist for the Students acknowledges his plan will amp up anxiety in schools, he doesn’t care. Instead, he repeats the mantra of his corporate masters, who want their piece of a public education system the governor calls a “$50 billion industry.”

Cuomo seemingly came under the spell of Bill Gates recently in telling us what this is really all about:      

“We have all new technology, new systems that we can bring to bear for education, and that’s what this is all about.”
                                                                             Andrew Cuomo
                                                                             April 1, 2015

As if New York’s schools aren't dry enough, Cuomo also envisions tying their funding to the quality of their teachers (according to his evaluation plan, of course). The day may soon arrive, for example, when a fourth-grader’s panic attack during a Cuomo Core test could contribute to her bus breaking down on the way to her dilapidated school.

It is an affront to American democracy and collective intelligence when an ignorant asshole like Andrew Cuomo gets to decide so much for so many.  

Cuomo said he was “celebrating late into the night” upon passage of his Inopportunity Agenda, a budget that simultaneously erodes the due process rights of middle-class workers and gives yacht owners a tax break.

Greed fuels the flame of hubris, however, and Cuomo’s actions, to the exasperation of education deformers everywhere, have only caused a simmering Opt-Out movement in New York to explode.

With lives and livelihoods threatened by toxic tests, New Yorkers have no choice but to fight back.

Fight back against a governor and legislature who call our children and teachers failures, but wouldn’t know the difference between a piece of chalk and a suppository.    

Fight back against Big Media; share this blog post with someone.

Fight back and refuse the tests.

Visit NYSAPE.org for answers to questions
the Department of Education won't answer.