Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared state budget victory Wednesday by saying in a radio interview that education overhauls will be “one of the greatest legacies for me and the state.”
The governor’s comments, which were pocked with shots at the state teachers union, came less than 12 hours after the state spending plan was officially approved by lawmakers. Included is an overhaul of the teacher evaluation system that the union fought tooth and nail.
“Despite the trauma of change, that’s going to be one of the greatest legacies for me in this state when all is said and done,” Cuomo said on “The Capitol Pressroom,” which his appearance on replaced the traditional budget kumbaya press conference with legislative leadership.
To achieve what he views as a legacy-defining policy, Cuomo warred with New York State United Teachers. In an email blast Tuesday, the union called the new evaluation system a “sham” and an “unworkable, convoluted plan that undermines local control, disrespects principals and school administrators, guts collective bargaining and further feeds the testing beast.”
“We had the most formidable political forces in Albany on the other side. The teachers union is a very powerful political force in Albany,” Cuomo said, later adding that people shouldn’t confuse “a political tactic of the opponent to excite the parents with the truth.”
The new teacher evaluation system, which will be implemented by the state Education Department, will rely on two components: student testing and observation of teachers. What percentage each piece will play is yet to be determined.
Within the testing piece, teachers will be graded on student performance on a state-sanctioned standardized test. If a teacher fails that portion of the evaluation, localities will have the option of using another test that would add to the teacher’s cumulative score.
Cuomo dispelled the notion that it’s the state mandating more testing on students (he reused rhetoric that those he most cares about are the students) because the decision for a second test would be made at the local level. He also defended testing as the only objective metric to measure school performance statewide.
In defending the observation portion of the evaluations, Cuomo said the union didn’t want a paid outside evaluator to come in, so evaluators from neighboring districts was the compromise.
The governor had little time to discuss ethics — the other key piece of the ELFA (Education, Labor and Family Assistance) budget bill — but did slap at Senate Democrats who have derided the latest reforms as not going far enough.
Cuomo said the Senate GOP majority did not want a complete restriction on outside income (to be clear, Senate Democrats proposed an adoption of the congressional model of allowing legislators to accept outside income worth only 15 percent of their legislative salary), and if Senate Democrats wanted something stronger, they should have jumped on it when they were briefly in the majority before he became governor.
“We forget that the Senate Democrats and the Assembly Democrats controlled the entire system with a Democratic governor,” he said. “If they had this concept, why didn’t they do it when they controlled the entire state of New York?”
A Senate Democratic Conference spokesman said on Twitter, “Who was AG during that period?” The answer is Cuomo.
Much of Tuesday’s controversy over both the education and ethics overhauls stemmed from the fact that the ELFA bill was printed less than 12 hours before the budget deadline. Still, lawmakers in both houses passed it before midnight — though the Assembly’s six-hour-long debate on it held up on-time passage of other bills.
“There’s always aggravation about production of bills,” the governor said. “The bill production methodology is really something. I think there’s a monk on the fifth floor of the Capitol who actually writes these bills that takes so long. But I share that frustration, actually.”
Cuomo quickly shifted from jokes to his most-used ethics talking point.
“But the ethics bill, is, at the end of the day, one of, if not the strongest, in the country in terms of disclosure of clients and outside income of elected officials,” he said. “And it’s transformative for the ethical climate of this state.”
The Capitol Confidential team: