The Prince of Common Core

According to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the Common Core standards have caused “massive confusion, massive anxiety, and massive chaos” throughout the state. In the same interview, the self-anointed “lobbyist for the students” also bizarrely implied that he’s ready to pick up a placard and join parent protests against the same standards he recently called “state of the art.” Cuomo is clearly conflicted over Common Core, and his foot sinks deeper into his mouth whenever he says anything about education these days.  The governor’s own Common Core panel has so far only stoked this confusion, soliciting from speakers ways to merely improve public opinion on the flawed standards.     

Sealed in the same glossy package, Common Core relies on high-stakes tests to bring home the bacon and fry it in the pan. Reformers have used these tests to both punish and profit from the public, enforcing emotional and financial consequences in the name of higher standards.  As a result, if Cuomo’s own teacher evaluation law (APPR) is to have any teeth, Cuomo needs Common Core as much as Common Core needs him. In another ambiguous utterance, the governor recently chastised the Board of Regents after they proposed allowing teachers to appeal any dismissals related to Common Core’s implementation. In other words, the union-busting Cuomo is okay with Common Core as long as some teachers get fired. What Cuomo doesn’t know, or want to admit, is that Common Core withers and dies without high-stakes tests feeding its fetid soil, the same high-stakes tests at the vanguard of his APPR.

In a 2011 letter to Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, Cuomo urged the adoption of a teacher evaluation plan that he said would be the “building blocks to greater performance in our education system.” As Cuomo’s plan runs riot throughout the state, however, the governor now says he has “nothing to do with” education in New York. Cuomo’s equivocation over Common Core should remind New Yorkers of another classic equivocator, his father and former New York governor Mario Cuomo.

Dubbed “Hamlet on the Hudson", Mario Cuomo could never make up his mind about running for president, agonizing publicly over the pros and cons of a presidential bid. While the elder Cuomo pondered his power, Prince Andrew's ambitions simmered.  Now, similar to his father’s vacillation over seeking higher office, Cuomo waffles over Common Core, exhibiting the contradictory tendencies of his father. The difference, however, is that Cuomo’s indecision is directly affecting students, parents, and teachers on a daily basis. His refusal to push for a pause in high-stakes testing while only vaguely criticizing Common Core's implementation does nothing to help communities already saddled with the gap elimination adjustment and Cuomo’s undemocratic tax cap, with many schools soon facing insolvency.  

Cuomo assumed he could ride the wave of education reform all the way to the White House in 2016.  Ironically, his double-speak on Common Core could drown him in this quest, with the full-force of his father’s legacy washing over him. As he now tries to walk his commitment to the Common Core all the way back to joining parents on the picket line, those parents might be asking, what will the Prince’s sign say?

Sadly, Andrew Cuomo doesn’t even know the answer to that question.

 

     

Cuomo vs. the Committee of 600,000

Between 2011 and 2012, New York teachers (NYSUT) spent $5.9 million to influence the political process. Opponents of unions will point to this as business as usual, just another example of Big Labor’s dominance of the system. Campaign donations in hand, politicians pull strings to protect and promote lazy public school teachers. However, business has been everything but usual in public education of late.  As teachers around the country grapple with budget cuts and Common Core, 300,000 of their colleagues have lost their job since 2009, and morale is at a twenty-year low.  With public education under assault from all angles, just how much did NYSUT’s millions buy for its members?

As it turns out, not much. During that same two-year period, the Committee to Save New York (CSNY), a pro-corporation, anti-union PAC formed with Governor Cuomo’s blessing, spent $17 million on lobbying—about $11 million more than teachers.  Fueled by large contributions from a few anonymous billionaires, CSNY and Cuomo successfully advanced their agenda in New York by slashing worker pensions and corporate taxes, topped with a pernicious property tax cap on school districts. Though CSNY recently filed papers to dissolve itself, saying that its “mission was largely successful”, (coincidentally coinciding with new requirements to reveal its donors) more groups like CSNY are bound to metastasize, touting the same desire to “neutralize the impact of special interest money.” However, when a small group of wealthy people can quickly coalesce and spend three times as much money on lobbying as 600,000 union members, does this level the scale, or knock it over?

Since the Citizens United ruling in 2010, what's happening in New York is happening all around the country, as a minority of wealthy individuals and the PACs they fund muffles the masses, and public financing initiatives have stalled with plutocrats’ billions subsuming the system. Though Cuomo himself is pushing his own version of campaign finance reform in his current budget, how sincere is he, given that he’s only aided and abetted the current system as governor? Will Cuomo refund the $33 million currently in his re-election war chest? Doubtful.       

With rank and file teachers’ anger toward their governor’s policies spilling out at forums and rallies across the state, NYSUT’s officers recently dropped $10,000 of union money at Cuomo’s birthday party, dancing the night away to Billy Joel amid the embers of members’ money.  VOTE-COPE, the union’s voluntary political action fund, is supposed to be put to prudent use, supporting politicians who “understand the importance of education.”  The fund raises the volume of NYSUT’s voice and helps engender favorable conditions for organized labor. Cuomo, however, has been anything but favorable to New York’s parents and teachers, slashing school aid while stubbornly moving forward with moronic standardized tests. Andy Pallotta, NYSUT’s executive vice president who authorized the donation to Cuomo, would like his members to believe that $10,000 was the price for a seat at Cuomo's table—albeit an expensive one. Pallotta and Revive NYSUT (the slate of candidates he’s running with to unseat NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi and his officers) liken Cuomo to a bossy principal or superintendent who they want to “win over.” However, is $10,000—or even $5.9 million—enough to win over Andrew Cuomo, or any other politician whose pockets are already overflowing with corporate cash?

Cuomo’s actions speak for themselves, and Pallotta and other union leaders' seats, while still in the same room, are now at the kiddie table.  Workers have been shooed away from the grown-ups by plutocrats and corporate interests. Unable to compete with corporate dollars, unions must change course and admit that their members’ modest political donations are no longer enough to win over politicians like Cuomo. If union dollars no longer shout, what then must they say?

For one, it need not be the job of unions to win over politicians. Politicians must win over all voters, including union members.  As echoed in VOTE-COPE’s mission statement, member donations must go toward candidates who already understand the importance of education and have proven this through their records. Union money cannot be wasted trying to change the minds of leaders who’ve already had their minds made up by the dollars of hedge fund managers, Michelle Rhee, and Bill Gates. Member donations should be used to defeat—not convert—candidates like Cuomo, and our present and future leaders must pay a political price for siding with corporations over people.

As union membership shrinks to its lowest level in 98 years, it is in every member's interest to help others form unions and launch campaigns to educate the public on how unions benefit all working people. With America as unequal as ever, each union member lost to budget cuts tips the scale further in favor of the one-percent.  Teachers unions can be instrumental in helping parents better understand current education reforms like the Common Core so that they’ll be best able to fight for their kids at the local level. The more parents know, the more supportive they’ll be of educators, ready to vote for leaders and laws that uphold the social contract. As voting rights fall under conservative crosshairs around the country, unions can also help get out the vote, engaging citizens in federal, state, and school board elections.  

Each year, NYSUT’s Committee of 100 travels to Albany to lobby for the organization's interests, just one way members can engage in the struggle to save public education. NYSUT needs a committee of 600,000 fighting in every corner of the state, from legislators' offices to doctors’ offices, town halls to shopping malls. With the clouds of Citizens United and corporate money darkening the political landscape, unions must parlay members’ financial support into grassroots activism, not futile efforts to persuade an anti-union governor who shines his shoes with $10,000 bills. Though $5.9 million is a lot less than $17 million, it will be worth a lot more after educating and amplifying the voices of everyone who cares about public education.  

Why the NYSUT Election Should Matter to Members

The ax against asinine education reforms is starting to swing in New York. Politicians are writing laws to unravel Common Core, and more and more local leaders are speaking out against the gap elimination adjustment and a crushing property tax cap. Changing laws is not easy, however, and those rallying against nonsensical reforms in New York and around the country have a task akin to an exorcism.

On the front lines of this battle are Dick Iannuzzi, president of New York’s largest teachers union (NYSUT), and his executive vice president, Andy Pallotta.  Paradoxically, both are fighting the powers that be while fighting each other, as Pallotta has helped form another group within NYSUT to challenge Iannuzzi’s presidency that calls itself “Revive NYSUT.” Running for president on the Revive ticket is not Pallotta but Karen Magee, president of the Harrison Association of Teachers. Magee has remained silent since accepting the nomination while Pallotta wines and dines politicians on VOTE-COPE money, the union’s voluntary political action fund. 

On the surface, Pallotta is only doing his job; NYSUT’s executive vice president is expected to push legislation on behalf of the members. As the campaign unfolds, however, many local leaders are starting to question just how effective Andy Pallotta has been as NYSUT’s chief legislative advocate. After all, if Pallotta is expected to push favorable laws, why have New York’s teachers been saddled with the tax cap, reduced pension tiers, Common Core, and InBloom? Pallotta’s inaction against this legislation sings louder than Billy Joel at Governor Cuomo’s birthday party.

Pallotta, the only NYSUT incumbent running unopposed, cut his teeth in the UFT, NYSUT’s largest yet smallest local. For example, only 14% percent of working teachers voted in the UFT’s last presidential election. This minority of active members and retirees who reelected Michael Mulgrew also essentially controls over a third of the votes for NYSUT president, and Mulgrew and the UFT have already endorsed the Revive slate. Should Revive come to power, Mulgrew’s UFT will be first in line for handouts from Cuomo as long as Cuomo’s signature reforms of the tax cap and APPR remained unmarred by Pallotta. An endorsement of Cuomo by NYSUT (spurring a subsequent AFL-CIO endorsement) wouldn’t hurt, either.  

Though rank and file teachers were among the first to see through the pseudo-democrat Cuomo, Pallotta, Mulgrew, and the rest of Revive have not sounded the alarm against him, opposing him in lukewarm spirit only. Many have questioned where Revive’s loyalty lies, as the group seems more interested in ousting Iannuzzi than Cuomo. Though elections are healthy for any organization—this contest has already engaged more members in unionism—NYSUT cannot afford to be more outspoken against itself than Cuomo. Ideally, Revive should be strong enough to oppose Iannuzzi and help NYSUT find a viable candidate to run against Cuomo.  This would undermine Revive’s tenuous platform, however, and require Pallotta to finally step off the political cocktail circuit and into the offices of legislators.

Last June, nearly 20,000 members of NYSUT converged in Albany to demand action against laws passed under Pallotta’s watch. The One Voice United rally was President Iannuzzi’s own attempt to awaken our leaders in the capital. Though Mulgrew failed to awaken his own members for the rally (most of the UFT did not attend), One Voice United aroused Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, whose money and dark-rimmed glasses determine much of New York’s education policies. Concerned that NYSUT was co-opting the reform narrative, Tisch and Education Commissioner John King soon embarked on a series of community forums around the state to clear up “misconceptions” about Common Core. 

By anyone’s standards, the Common Core forums were a disaster for the Regents, with passionate parents bringing everything but the torches and tomatoes.  Tisch and King’s detached, myopic views alienated people at each stop on the tour, and calls for King’s resignation before the forums suddenly seemed premature.  NYSUT’s “Speak Truth to Power” campaign had reached the grassroots, with Albany leaders on the run. Meanwhile, with no Pallotta-pushed repeal in sight, NYSUT’s legal department filed a lawsuit against the undemocratic tax cap. NYSUT also recently withdrew its support for the Common Core, and moved to vote “no confidence” in Commissioner King, who has screwed his feet even tighter to his stubborn positions since the disastrous forums.  Iannuzzi began picking up where Palllotta never left off, joined by people and politicians of all political persuasions.  As Iannuzzi’s long game played out, the Revive candidates huddled behind the scenes, biding their time until their certain victory in April.

Revive should not become too complacent, however, as local presidents will have something to say about Magee and the rest of Revive at this year’s Representative Assembly (RA).  Iannuzzi, along with other incumbents Maria Neira (Vice President), Kathleen Donahue (Vice President), and Lee Cutler (Secretary Treasurer), have formed Stronger Together and are urging leaders from all locals to attend this year’s RA, regardless of their size.  If NYSUT is truly a democractic organization, multitudinous voices from all corners of the state will drown the din of Magee and the UFT this April in New York City.    

New York’s teachers are calling for help all over, demanding action from their union. Though slow to unfold, Dick Iannuzzi’s actions are now beginning to come into view. Common Core has garnered unanimous disdain, and the public is finally starting to side with teachers again. NYSUT must keep this momentum moving, and solidarity needs affirmation now more than ever before. This election should matter to NYSUT members, as their union is the only thing standing between them and the twisted visions of plutocrats.   

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.  

 

 

 

Something's Rotting in the State of New York

Something’s rotting in the state of New York, and it’s not the apples.

Due to a property tax cap passed in 2011—which requires localities and school districts to raise taxes no more than 2 percent or the rate of inflation—funding for schools withers in the meadow, as tests and class sizes grow all around it.  With the stench of decay thickening in the midst of a NYSUT lawsuit over the tax cap, the state recently argued in court that education is “not a fundamental right.”  This should surprise President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who’ve called education the “civil rights issue of our time”, even awarding New York $700 million as part of the Race to the Top (RTTT) contest.  Are “civil” rights “fundamental” rights? If so, shouldn’t the federal government ask for its money back from a state which passes laws to undermine this civil right?

New York has outpaced most states in the implementation of Common Core testing and a more rigid teacher evaluation system (APPR), two key requirements of RTTT. While these programs have been controversial because of their emotional and monetary costs, the tax cap has been largely ignored as an issue, with many New Yorkers against Common Core, APPR, and InBloom but in favor of the tax cap. In the coming years, thanks to the tax cap, many districts will attempt to implement these programs and other unfunded mandates with fewer teachers and fewer resources, as they watch their RTTT and reserve funds dry up, with or without the reforms.  With funding for education in New York already at a 20-year low, the tax cap has the potential to damage New York’s rural and suburban schools more than testing, APPR, and InBloom COMBINED.  You can’t reform insolvency.

Albany claims that the tax cap is not a state dictate. After all, local voters can override it. Yet a school district seeking to surpass the cap must receive approval from a 60-percent supermajority of voters.  The law therefore undermines the essence of democracy—simple majority rule. In New York, one person now equals less than one vote, and a minority of voters can determine how much money schools receive. In the face of this, what district would risk having its budget voted down? Out of only 28 districts that attempted an override in 2012, 21 failed. However, 14 of the 21 that failed received more than 50 percent approval.  Our kids deserve no less than a majority of minds determining what goes into and comes out of their schools. After all, how can we call public education a democratic institution if a mere minority of citizens determines its funding?

Hatched in an inequitable egg, the tax cap breeds even more inequality once unleashed across the state. Rich communities who stay under the cap have more money (for now) to play with than poor communities, as spending is limited to two percent of the previous year’s budget.  According to a NYSUT affidavit, “The chasm between [rich and poor districts] will only widen if lower performing districts continue to be deprived of local control over budgeting, particularly in light of the state’s failure to meet its funding obligations.” For example, in 2012-2013, the wealthiest districts were able to raise their tax levy per pupil over $500 dollars more than the poorest districts. Though test scores are hardly an indicator of academic superiority, it should come as no surprise that students in wealthier districts also outperform their poorer counterparts on state exams.  Poverty at home conjoins with poverty at school, spawning a preternatural beast set on devouring our kids’ futures.   

With the idiot wind of the tax cap at his back, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to withhold even more money from schools. His Tax Relief Commission, led by former governor George Pataki, recently recommended rebates over the next two years for homeowners in districts which do not override the tax cap. In essence, districts will be awarded for spending less money on education, while Cuomo cuts corporate taxes and pushes casino construction throughout the state.  The self-proclaimed “lobbyist for the students” suddenly cares more about gambling than education. This proposal, along with the tax cap, only exacerbates the economic divide throughout the state, as residents in more affluent districts will bite the better half of the apple. Oddly, much like Arne Duncan, the only money Cuomo can find for schools is through gimmicky competitions, not realizing that education is not “bowling for dollars”, as one Long Island superintendent quipped. 

Opponents of New York’s tax cap are not pro-taxes, but pro-democracy. A democracy depends on an educated populace. Ironically, many of those first to slash education budgets equate education with our “global economic competitiveness.”  Regardless of whether it helps or hinders our economy, education is weakened when citizens are incentivized to underfund it.  Public education feeds on fair and equitable funding, not worm-infested refuse.  Let the simple majority determine how much our kids should get before there’s nothing left.