Five Takeaways from Cuomo’s Letter to State Education Officials

This past June, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Legislature debated how to tweak to the teacher evaluation system up until the final hours of the legislative session. The compromise they eventually reached, which was meant to address the flawed rollout of the Common Core educational standards, was to delay the use of students’ performance on Common Core-aligned tests as a criterion for grade placement and as a factor in teacher evaluations for below-average instructors. 

However, last year’s teacher evaluation results, which were released this week, show 95.6 percent of teachers were rated “effective” or “highly effective”--at the same time that state tests show only about 30 percent of students are graded “proficient” in math and English. Cuomo told reporters on Wednesday the teacher evaluations don’t “reflect reality”  and that further reforms are needed.

Before the 2015 legislative session begins next month, Cuomo is already demonstrating his intent to make education reform a major goal. On Thursday, state Director of State Operations Jim Malatras sent a letter to state Board of Regents Merryl Tisch and outgoing state Education Commissioner John King.

Here are the five major takeaways of the letter:

1. Cuomo will present an “aggressive legislative package to improve public education” that will be introduced and debated during the budget process. On Wednesday the governor also hinted that he may not sign the teacher evaluation “safety-net” bill negotiated with lawmakers earlier this year, and argued that the new teacher scores reveal a more fundamental problem with the evaluation system as a whole. 

2. Cuomo’s contention that more money does not necessarily result in better schools is reiterated in the letter. Malatras doubles down on the governor's description of the public school system a “public monopoly” and continues to raise the possibility of more charter schools and reforms to the current way the state funds public education.

3. Malatras raises the possibility of offering financial or other incentives to reward high-performing teachers and asks King and Tisch how best to remove poor-performing teachers, calling the current process to remove a poor-performing teacher “virtually impossible.”

4. Malatras says the education bureaucracy’s mission is “to sustain the bureaucracy and the status quo and therefore is often the enemy of change.” In response to being painted as a self-serving "bureaucracy," NYSUT President Karen Magee shot back that the governor is relying on "hedge fund billionaires" to shape education policy instead of listening the "real experts—parents, educators and students."

5. The letter asks Tisch and King to give their opinion on a dozen education-related issues, seemlingly setting a more positive tone and relationship between NYSED and the Cuomo administration compared to last year, when Cuomo did not hesitate to blame the current Common Core-related problems, including the teacher evaluations, on King. At the same time, some of the questions appear to be merely rhetorical and intended more to make a point than to seek real input. Noting that King is on his way out, Malatras asks for responses "without political filters" the answer what is "best as a pure matter of policy," although that also implies Cuomo himself is above political considerations and that the education officials had been less than forthcoming previously.

 The full text of the letter is below:

Cuomo Education Reform Letter