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.

Who Funds New York's Funds?

From the Regents Research Fund to the Educational Fund, a small group of billionaires are having fun running education funds in New York.  According to Webster’s, a fund is “an amount of money used for a special purpose.”  Though the purposes of these funds vary, their purposes have asserted their presence in the minds of legislators across New York State. After all, money talks and writes laws.

In his recent “State of the State” speech, Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed the creation of a “teacher excellence fund”, which he touts as the “first statewide teacher performance bonus program."  This program amounts to nothing more than merit pay, as teachers will be “eligible” for a $20,000 bonus if they are rated “highly effective” according to their district’s Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) plan. Passed in 2010, APPR is a controversial teacher evaluation law that Cuomo wanted to—according to one source—“force down [New Yorkers’] throats.”  Cuomo is now proposing to force money down teachers' throats to get them to teach better. The failures of merit pay are so epic, however, that an obvious question once again arises: how can a politician be this ignorant about education? Though this question is asked so frequently these days that it has become rhetorical, its answer is elementary: follow the funding.    

Unless the teacher’s union (NYSUT) agrees, Cuomo’s merit pay program is unlikely to gain traction. However, if NYSUT does agree, who will fund it? Would the same billionaires funding the other funds suddenly fund New York’s teachers? Should this scenario come to pass, teachers could conceivably become more indebted to the likes of Bill Gates than their colleagues, much like politicians who are more indebted to plutocrats than their constituents.  

With the passage in 2011 of Cuomo’s undemocratic tax cap, tax dollars going into New York’s public schools are dwindling among growing class sizes and mandates. It may soon reach the point where public schools and teachers depend upon a few billionaires to stay afloat, the same billionaires who’ve created other funds aimed at undermining things like collective bargaining and tenure. The same billionaires who beg for lower taxes at the expense of workers' pensions. Money is power, and with more money flowing from the funds of the few, their power over public education policies will only proliferate. Look no further for examples of America’s economic inequality than our public education system.

In failing to even mention the popular uprising against the Common Core and standardized testing in his speech, Cuomo once again ignored the majority of New Yorkers in a favor of the funds of the few. Not coincidentally, this wealthy few also support using Common Core tests to evaluate teachers, and have donated heavily to Cuomo’s campaign. Hence, the majority still struggles to shout louder than the piercing rustle of private cash, with Cuomo’s political ambitions masquerading as educational ignorance. This phenomenon is not confined to education, by the way. Since the Citizens United ruling in 2010, the money of the few has overwhelmed the voices of the many across the nation.  From education to energy, women’s rights to voting rights, our democracy is under siege, with “Quid Pro Quo” ready to take its place upon the Great Seal.    

Former New York Governor and U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt once warned of “an invisible government” which owes “no responsibility to the people.” Roosevelt sought to eliminate this “unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics.” Andrew Cuomo should heed his predecessor’s words. The more control he surrenders to the wealthy few, the more our democratic principles suffer. Public education need not be placed at the mercy of a privileged minority.

Like it or not, we are all part of the public, and we should all have a say in how our kids are educated.  

Test Scores and Standards: An Inhuman Marriage

In 2000, when President George W. Bush wondered, “Is our children learning?” no one anticipated his nonsensical question would spark a nonsensical education reform movement based on nonsensical tests. Many Americans took Bush and his question seriously, however, electing him as our president for two terms while hanging our children’s futures on curriculum and tests designed by faceless corporations. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law ushered in the error of test-based accountability, when answers to written questions suddenly meant the difference between achievement and failure, prosperity and closure.  The corporate bottom-line seduced a desperate populace, and students, teachers, and principals began rising and falling to the tune of test scores.  If it couldn’t be measured, it couldn’t be counted.

With the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, the testing mountain rose even higher, and the first students to reach the top became more important than those left behind.  The Obama administration closed more schools and fired more teachers while championing (some say illegally) the Common Core standards, measurable only through nebulous, age-inappropriate tests. Kindergartners needed “college and career” readiness as much as high school seniors, with Bill Gates’s “powerful market of people” sucking districts dry. Companies like Pearson swooped in to sell curriculum materials for their own flawed tests.    

Though high standards are elemental, we cheapen these standards and the accompanying curriculum when pairing them with high-stakes tests. Politicians and profiteers have wed the Common Core standards to test scores, expecting expedient, objective measurements of learning while undermining schools and communities in the process. Fearful teachers have no choice but to teach to the test, often relying on unwieldy or flawed curriculum copyrighted by corporations. In New York, for example, up to 40% of a teacher’s evaluation is based on Common Core tests, and the state recently paid private companies $50 million to create curriculum modules (units) related to these tests. Though much of these units are poorly designed by non-educators, many teachers in New York and elsewhere have no choice but to use them because their districts require it and/or they cannot anticipate what types of questions will appear on the tests.  This is like forcing a doctor to prescribe the wrong medication even though he knows it’s killing the patient. 

The human mind is complex, and measuring the mind is even more complex. While a test might tell us if a student can apply a formula or decipher a vocabulary word, it is limited to a narrow set of questions administered on a specific day. Is what’s not on the test of equal or more value? If so, how do we measure this? Unfortunately, the answer is not as easy as feeding blackened bubbles through a machine. The answer involves talking to and interacting with our kids, something a bureaucrat cannot do from behind his desk in the capital.

Through daily interaction, parents, teachers, and administrators are best able to determine if our children are learning. After all, they know the faces behind the test scores, and any educator will tell you that there is no sight greater than a child’s face lighting up with knowledge. This light is unlikely to shine during a standardized test, however, but through other, more human assessments.  It shines in the creation of paintings, poems and plays. It shines in scientific experiments and historical reenactments. It shines in philosophical discussions and musical compositions. It shines from our kids daily in how they treat themselves and others as they join the ranks of an enlightened citizenry.

Measuring learning is not supposed to be easy. Like gold beneath a river, everyone wants to find it, yet few want to dig for it. It requires persistence and commitment from those in the water. Parents—who fortunate kids typically spend the most time with—must look for evidence of learning daily, be it subtle or overt. Teachers must personalize learning, making knowledge more applicable to authentic situations rather than generic multiple-choice tests. The third and most consistently ignored point is the role of school administrators, who must recognize effective teaching when evident. Administrators across America must be able to pinpoint the presence of the standards in the faces of students rather than in spreadsheets. This means fighting for great teachers in the classroom while escorting ineffective ones out, sidestepping the mythical obstruction of tenure. When local principals and superintendents surrender control to bureaucrats and shadowy state boards,  however, the faces of our kids and teachers become obscured by data points and dollar signs.   

"Is our children are learning?" Politicians and corporations should be prepared for an even more complicated answer than Bush's original question.  The answer is complicated simply because human relationships are complicated, and knowledge cannot and should not be deduced to a number.  School leaders must wrestle with this question daily, however, throughout their schools in their communities. Let's hold these leaders accountable through direct engagement of what works and what doesn't, scouring for evidence of results among truly human pursuits rather than a marriage of consequential tests to consequential standards.

Are our children learning? Look into their faces and you will find out.