NY Dem majority passes Cuomo's ed bill "with heavy hearts". One even holds his nose while voting.

[madfloridian]

The Democrats have a majority, disapprove of his bill....but pass it anyway. This angers me so much. I am wide awake after reading this stupidity. This is needless acquiescence. Can we stand up for nothing at all?

Assembly affirms Cuomo-driven education budget, with ‘heavy hearts’


Kenneth Zebrowski. (New York State Assembly)

ALBANY—Members of the the Assembly’s Democratic majority, with a few exceptions, supported a budget bill that overhauled state education law at the urging of Governor Andrew Cuomo. But they weren’t happy about it.

One by one, Democrats rose to describe their grave concerns about the bill—which creates a new educator evaluation system, rolls back tenure protections and makes it easier to fire teachers. One lawmaker even held his nose as he voted.

But, they argued, the final agreement was better for public school teachers and students than Cuomo’s original proposal and it was better to accept some changes than risk a late budget.

“How delicate is the balance between compromise and dysfunction?” said Assemblyman Kenneth Zebrowski, a Democrat from Rockland County, while explaining his “yes” vote late Tuesday night. “Depending upon how you look at an issue, compromise can become dysfunction or good government, and forcing a late budget can be dysfunction or good government.

And the words of another Democrat who talked about how bad the bill is but voted for it anyway.

Another Bronx Democrat and a former teacher, Assemblyman Michael Benedetto, called the bill “terrible” and said the chamber’s impending approval was “a shame.” But because of the significant increases in school aid woven into the bill, “It is wrong to vote against it.” He voted aye.

Destroying public education one nose-holding Democrat at a time.

[msongs]

1. spineless politicians with no principles they are willing to uphold. nice nt

[madfloridian]

2. Dems beg us to give them the majority, and they just give the issues away.

They could have stopped this bill, but they did not even try.

[merrily]

4. Yeah, they know no better than to try to be nice to Republicans. Oh, wait....

[merrily]

3. Say hello to President Cuomo.

Thanks, madfloridian.

[madfloridian]

5. Well said, Peter Greene. "people who club baby seals feel a little bit bad about it"

NY: Teachers Can Go To Hell, With a Heavy Heart

NY Democrats tried to make it look like less of a total victory-in-a-walk for public education opponent Andrew Cuomo by making sad pouty faces and issuing various meaningless mouth noises while going ahead and voting for the damn thing. "Ohh, woes and sadderations," they cried as they took turns walking to the podium to give Cuomo exactly the tools he wanted for helping to put an end to teaching as a profession in New York state.

I am not sure what Democrats hoped to accomplish by taking to the podium and twitter to say how deeply, tragically burdened they were. I mean, I guess you'd like to know that people who club baby seals feel a little bit bad about it, but it really doesn't make a lot of difference to the baby seal, who is in fact still dead.

Maybe the lesson here is that the craziest person in the room controls the conversation. The person who's willing to ram the car right into the sheer rock face gets to navigate the trip, and Cuomo has displayed repeatedly that he really doesn't care what has to be smashed up. If the world isn't going to go on his way, it doesn't need to go one for anybody.

But if teachers needed reason #2,416 to understand that Democrats simply aren't friends to public education, there it was, biting its quivering lip and sniffling, "I feel really bad about this" as it tied up education and fired it out of a canon so that it could land directly under a bus that had been dropped off the Empire State Building.

Hell, even Campbell Brown must be a little gobsmacked, as Cuomo's budgetary bludgeoning of tenure and job security rules has made her lawsuit unnecessary. The Big Standardized Tests results will continue their reign of teacher evaluation, dropping random and baseless scores onto the heads of New York educators like the feces of so many flying pigs. And all new teachers need to do to get their (soon-to-be-meaningless) tenure is get the random VAM dice to throw up snake-eyes four times in a row. Meanwhile, school districts can go out back to the magic money trees to find the financing for hiring the "outside evaluators" who will provide the cherry on top of the VAM sauce.

[KoKo]

15. Recommend Read...eom.

[Unknown Beatle]

6. It's like college kids

who proclaim that the liquor they're drinking tastes like shit, but they continue drinking it nonetheless.

[Enthusiast]

7. Cuomo is the very example of the right leaning Democrats we do not want.

Just imagine, a "Democrat" that favors dismantling public education.

[RandiFan1290]

8. ...but pass it anyway

[hobbit709]

9. It's getting harder and harder to distinguish between R and D.

[99Forever]

10. Someone tell me again why I should EVER support a "centrist."

DINOs suck. Especially the rich ones.

[stillwaiting]

11. It is God-awful and completely unacceptable.

I hope one day a movement starts to clean up the Democratic Party.

It is desperately needed.

So fucking tired of elected Democrats enabling right-wing Billionaire agendas.

[F4lconF16]

28. There is one, and it's called socialism.

I won't vote for Democrats who won't support me, period. Hell, I am this close to abandoning them entirely because of shit like this, and I've had socialists in the International Socialist Organization that I participate in make a very, very good case why I should. Unfortunately the Democrats continue to make worse and worse cases as to why I shouldn't.

[madfloridian]

12. They said it was better than Cuomo's original, and they didn't want budget to be late.

But, they argued, the final agreement was better for public school teachers and students than Cuomo’s original proposal and it was better to accept some changes than risk a late budget.

So they would rather harm teachers than risk a late budget????

[ananda]

13. What the fuck!

Geez!

Holding their fucking noses???

Why not just do the right thing and
vote against it?!!!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. The Not As Bad Wing caves...as usual.

[MisterP]

16. "nose-holder" = "my word is worthless and my criticisms are basically hot air"

[Orsino]

17. Shrugging like a boss. n/t

[KamaAina]

18. "it was better to accept some changes than risk a late budget"?!

When has NY State not had a late budget? Back in John Jay's time?

[madfloridian]

19. "permanent licenses are no longer permanent, a backdoor way to dump senior teachers"

From NYC Educator blog:

Here Come the Independent Evaluators

I'm not often at a loss for words, but the depth and breadth of the Great Democratic Assembly Sellout of 2015 is hard for me to take. I watched Ron Kim, whose speech I admired at the Bayside forum, speak to the Assembly about how bad the bill was and explain he was voting for it anyway. He did so for the money, the money that is attached to the worsened APPR.

...And it certainly looks like they have their eye on getting rid of teachers who don't get those test scores. Get rated ineffective on test scores and you can't get an overall good rating. Who the hell is going to want to teach the kids I serve? And when an independent evaluator comes in, how will he or she know that the kid I'm not asking questions just came from China, or El Salvador, or Korea, or Egypt the day before yesterday, and that I'm trying not to humiliate her by putting her on the spot right away?

And then, of course, there is the fact that permanent licenses are no longer permanent, a backdoor way to dump senior teachers for no reason whatsoever. Forget to register, and who knows what the hell that will entail, and it's no more license, no more tenure, and no more job. I have seen that happen to people who didn't keep up with their paperwork, and it's no fun at all.

Then there is the failing schools model, and it looks like it's designed to create them. When you mandate that the bottom 5% are failures, there will always be failures. This is the idiotic system Microsoft used, the one that gave us such brilliant innovations as the ubiquitous Windows phone every teenage student of mine simply must have. The fact that all so-called failing schools contain large numbers of high-needs kids, like mine, is neither here nor there.

And Mulgrew was mistaken when he said receivership did not entail revocation of contract. It appears to be entirely possible.

[Cosmic Kitten]

20. Political expediency over principles or values

Well, at least they
are on "our' team (D)

[madfloridian]

25. .......

Well said. It drives me crazy.

[madfloridian]

21. Professor/blogger Mark Naison was there during the vote.

When Democracy Died in the New York State Assembly

Something inside me died tonight in the New York State Assembly. Democratic legislator after Democratic legislator, some who claimed to be lifelong friends of public education, some who were once teachers themselves, caved in and voted for a bill that was going to add to the test burden on the already over tested children of the state, subject teachers to more scripting and more intimidation than they already had to endure and strip power away from principals and local school districts.

....The interests of the children, the families, the teachers, the principals and the elected school board of our state were treated as impediments to a vision of educational transformation that handed power and funding over to private interests whose contributions filled the campaign coffers of officials of both parties. That such a give away of power and money took place in a Budget bill that included "ethics reform" made it all the more ironic

This was one of the most blatant displays of political cynicism and political corruption that I have seen in my lifetime.

It was quite literally sickening

[sabrina 1]

26. It reminds me of watching the Iraq War Vote. Something died inside of a lot of Democrats

that night also.

How shameful. I live in NY State and will definitely be watching to see how at least some of those sell-outs can be primaried and ousted.

[madfloridian]

30. I remember that time so well.

I think the politicians were unprepared for the fairly new well-informed internet folks.

[sabrina 1]

22. The Democrats have become so spineless it is embarrassing. I remember fighting right wingers

against their attempt to paint Democrats as 'wimps'. But the more I see of these kinds of capitulations, the more I wonder if they were right after all.

Where oh were are the fighters in our Party?

I can think of only a few I can count on one hand!

That is not COMPROMISE, it is CAPITULATION.

Someone teach them how to negotiate on behalf of the people who elected them.

Cuomo would have relented if they had taken a united position against this bill.

Let HIM worry about holding up the budget and BLAME him if it happens.

He didn't do so well in the last election. A virtual unknown got over 30% of the vote that would have been his had he acted like a Democrat.

I sure hope he doesn't have any presidential aspirations. Enough with these Corporate, Third Way Dems.

[madfloridian]

24. "Cuomo would have relented if they had taken a united position against this bill."

I agree with that. I guess the billionaire boys clubs have made capitulation worthwhile.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

23. .

[Faux pas]

27. I believe they ALL are

Last edited Fri Apr 3, 2015, 10:26 AM - Edit history (1)

a bunch of wusses. Can't even call them republican lite, they are rethugs in liberal clothing. F-ing with education is the death of the country.

[F4lconF16]

29. I will not vote for a centrist.

If they attack education, I will not support them.

If they will not stand up to the MIC and the needless waste of trillions for death and destruction...

I will not support them.

If they will not speak out against the prison system, the drug war, and the endemic racism involved...

I will not support them.

If they enable Shell to drill for oil in the Arctic, continuing a legacy of environmental destruction and condemning me and my progeny to a broken world...

I will not support them.

If they will cut social programs for the poor, for the elderly, for the disabled...

I will not support them.

If they will not proclaim loudly the attacks on women across the country, and instead remain quiet...

I will not support them.

I will not.

Thank you, madfloridian, for your constant work in bringing these issues to our attention. It is critically important that we realize that Democrats as well as Republicans are often just as much the problem. When you sacrifice your principles, you are left with nothing. I can't afford to vote for someone who will do so. My future and my children's future are too important. The system must change, because it is hurting us all. I think socialism is the answer, and unfortunately I can see a time in the not-so-distant future when I may have to leave this wonderful site because of the insanity of those who believe we can continue heading down this path and somehow things will get better.

[madfloridian]

31. Rejected by Dems earlier in March. More bad parts listed here.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/ny-dems-reject-cuomos-ed-reform-plan/373581/

Democratic legislators in the New York State Assembly have rejected Gov. Andrew Cuomo's aggressive 11-point reform plan, which would be tied to $800 million in school funding and the promise of an increased $1.1 billion in state aid if all 11-points were signed into law.

The January proposal suggested reforms that included $20,000 rewards for effective teachers, an easier removal process for ineffective teachers, the expansion of the state's charter school cap, the expansion of mayoral control, the transformation of ineffective schools, the modification of the state's current teacher evaluation process, and the tying of teacher tenure to classroom performance.

Speaker Carl E. Heastie explained the rejection, saying, “We must help our children to succeed, not punish them because they may live in poorer communities or deny their schools the funding they need to improve the learning environment.”

Expansion of charter schools, greater mayoral control, turning "ineffective" schools into charters (assume that is what is meant by "transformation".)

And tying teacher tenure to classroom performance, no matter what the capability of the kids. And that's where the "termination" of contract likely comes in....career teachers gone that quickly.

[liberal_at_heart]

32. The Democratic politicians hold their nose while voting for legislation and the Democratic voters

hold their noses while voting for Democratic politicians. There has to be something better. We have to make something better happen. I keep hearing well when there is something better we will vote for it. Well nothing better will ever happen if we don't make it happen. I for one will never hold my nose while voting ever again. I will only vote for those I feel will write and vote on legislation that will help the people, not harm them. These Democrats who held their nose while voting for this education reform are responsible for any harm that comes to those children and to those teachers.

[madfloridian]

33. I agree. The harm that comes from this is on them.