With the rough economy hitting the Syracuse region hard students in this community are interested in being as competitive for the tight job market as possible with their academic credentials. It appears that although many teachers in the region may share some reservations about the governors plans to improve teacher evaluation standards that nevertheless the students may have a friend in the governors office who wants them to be able to have a good chance to get ahead in life as possible.
The New York Post has published an editorial, "Godspeed, Governor." Andrew Cuomo has been nicknamed the Education Governor in this editorial, after he recently presented a $132.5 billion budget for the fiscal year beginning in April, while effectively taking over full control of New York’s public schools. Cuomo has linked adoption of a state-wide teacher-evaluation regimen to the overall budget.
However, Cuomo faces opposition from the teachers unions on this issue. The governor has commented “There’s a crisis in education in that the focus has become more about the business interests of the system than the student- interests. Education is not supposed to be an employment program for the adults.” He has gone on to say that the proper emphasis should be on “student achievement . . . as a measure of success.” And it is Cuomo's position that the best way to do this is to tie teacher-evaluation standards to student-performance benchmarks, or test scores.
Cuomo has said that he wants the state’s principal teachers union, New York State United Teachers, to drop their anti-reform lawsuit and to intead agree with the Board of Regents on real standards within 30 days. If the teachers union fails to do this the governor says he will draft his own evaluation plan and make it part of his budget legislation. Furthermore, he has said if individual districts fail to have new teacher-grading regimes in place within a year, they will lose out on an already promised 4 percent hike in school funding. The next move is up to the teachers union.
