Governor Andrew Cuomo today came to Brooklyn and blasted the teacher’s union as caring more about their own agenda and less about their core mission of educating students.
Cuomo’s comments at the BRIC Cultural Building on Fulton Street came before and after a speech he delivered outlining his Opportunity Agenda before mainly Brooklyn elected officials and staff, members of his administration and the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce members.
The governor’s education agenda includes increasing the schools budget contingent on reforms including tougher teacher evaluations, allowing private entities to take over chronicly failing schools and increasing the number of charter schools.
Teachers and organizations aligned with them allege that Cuomo’s budget is short-changing Brookly school districts millions of dollars stemming from the Campaign For Fiscal Equity lawsuit settlement.
But Cuomo accused the teachers union of stuffing lawmakers with campaign contributions and that the public education system is fundamentally flawed.
“New York spends more per student than any other state in the nation yet our students continue to lag behind other states in nearly every category, including math, ELA, college-readiness and graduation rates. Further, last year less than one percent of teachers in New York State were rated ineffective but State test results show that only 35.8 percent of our students in 3rd through 8th grades were proficient in math and 31.4 percent were proficient in English Language Arts, with even lower scores for students in certain race/ethnicity groups,” said Cuomo.
Cuomo noted there are currently 178 failing schools in New York State – including 25 in Brooklyn. Over the last ten years, 250,000 children – including more than 40,000 here in Brooklyn – went through these failing schools, he said.
Following his speech, Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon said Cuomo’s views on education was not steeped in reality.
“I agree with some of it and I disagree entirely with other aspects of it. I don’t believe the only variable to children’s success is the teachers. So you just can’t blame teachers and that’s what this does. We need to give teachers support. There are some aspects of the governor’s proposal are not grounded in reality but rather in rhetoric and not the reality of how schools work. So I’m looking forward to working with him to improve his proposals,” said Simon.
