April Fools

This week in Albany our elected officials will be finalizing the annual NYS budget.  Last week my son and I made a visit to Albany with our friends from Citizen Action and the Alliance for Quality Education to speak with our elected officials about funding schools which is a big negotiating point in this budget cycle.  Governor Cuomo, lacking a true mandate to independently tie his shoes is holding school aid hostage by adding all kinds of poison pills to the budget, like more reliance on testing, more charter schools, and tax incentives that disproportionately benefit the  wealthy, in exchange for a fraction of the funding actually needed.  It is my understanding that the Assembly and Senate have rejected most of the proposals and are collaborating on a compromise budget, but it still falls short of the $2 billion in school aid that is owed and the love affair with testing for teacher evaluations is still on the table.  If you are reading this call your representatives and complain loudly before the final product is adopted.

Damning evidence is mounting from every corner of the ideological spectrum that the only incentive that has been fostered by testing for the sake of evaluating teachers is teaching to the test and ultimately demoralizing teachers, students and parents.  I will always support quality public education, but until this failed experiment with Race to the Top, Common Core, No Child Left Behind (collectively let's call them the creative use of marketing slogans), I'm educating at home.  The impetus to turn every public service into a commodity and imbed it with economic value to measure and evaluate is a destructive trend that fails on many levels.  I get squeamish when I hear about "patients" being referred to as "clients."  College students, now turned customer, spending a fortune on classes expect to automatically pass because they paid for it.  Why not?  It is no longer education, but an investment.  Students are not uniform widgets and teachers are not the owners of the factory with one objective to fulfill.  Kids are the product of their environment and families, with a dash of genetic lottery for good measure.  And on that note, I'm getting ranty...