Cuomo's Education Conundrum

NY faces a big issue in education.  What to do about the Common Core and testing.  NY received federal money to convert publicly owned schools into private charter schools and implement insane testing and teacher evaluation requirements from the Race tot the Top grants.

The shoe is dropping on all those ideas. Parents and taxpayers are getting (actually already are) sick of all the testing.  Over 200,000 students opted out of the state mandated ELA, MAth, and Science tests last year (2015).  The kicker?  The highest opt out rates were in teh wealthier districts that tend to have higher test scores and higher performance ratings.

To boot - NYSUT had an active campaign that informed parents of their right to opt their children out of the exams.  In the district where I worked students came to the Library and asked where to get the letters and printed them off using district printers and copiers.  Nice use of taxpayer dollars.
And if that weren't enough - the students had their own plans to jinx the exams.  I heard of numerous stories in my district of students that answered all the multiple choice questions in a straight line (all choice A, B, C, etc) and wrote "I don't know" or "I don't care" in the short answer and essay sections.  Some drew pictures.

My question is - What sort of data is State Ed going to parse from this?

The opposition to NCLB and RttT testing is growing at all levels.  Students hate the tests and are organizing.  Parents and taxpayers are sick of all the money being wasted and are putting pressure on elected officials, including Governor "Status" Cuomo.  Everyone knows that he has higher ambitions.
Teachers are organized and refused to endorse Cuomo in the last state election.  Normally unions (rather mindlessly) back the Democrats.  This time,  they took a principled stand.  They are continuing to put pressure on the Board of Regents.  Robert Bennett (pro-test) resigned in 2015.  Two more pro-test Regents have announced that they are resigning this year.

And Commissioner Elia is now looking at reforming the Common Core Standards because of problems in the way they were developed and written.  Also on the table are potential reforms to how teachers are evaluated.

Change is coming and we need to keep pushing and cranking up the heat on the pawns of the corporate driven, so called "education reform" movement.  (In reality it is an education deform movement.)  Top down changes are meeting the immovable force of voters that are sick of it.

Socialists demand:
-and end to the receivership laws
-an end to standardized tests
-an end to punative teacher evaluations

When the people arise, we achieve results.

And we are getting together across the state and across ages.

Marx & Engels said "Workers of the world unite."  I think this is what he had in mind.