Hochul avoids directly addressing New York’s central education scandal
Once again, the State Education Department is failing at a basic task — yet Gov. Hochul mainly wants you to know that it’s not her fault.
Yes, Hochul criticized SED for missing its own early-December deadline for fully releasing statewide data on 3rd-through-8th-grade exams students took back in June.
But she passed on the chance to flag what a disaster SED’s become under Commissioner Betty Rosa and the current Board of Regents.
SED’s absurd delay in releasing data from standardized tests (which it should’ve had within weeks) prevents “timely intervention” for the students falling behind, notes the Empire Center’s Emily D’Vertola, and keeps the public in the dark about “how their school stacks up around the district, the state and the rest of the country.”
But Hochul, asked about the issue last week, deflected: “This is a question for the State Education Department, which I do not control.”
“I have no say over their timing, what they do, they make a lot of decisions that are independent of our involvement,” she added — all true, but also all reason she should be free to show the outrage this failure deserves.
Classic Hochul: Covering her own butt rather than damning the failure of the state’s education “leaders.”
Of course, that would mean implicitly criticizing Assembly Speaker Car Heastie — who effectively picks the Regents and so sets SED’s course.
And the course Heastie’s chosen goal is to please the teachers unions, not serve the kids’ needs.
Albany pours billions into public schools every year without demanding an iota of improvement.
SED and the Board of Regents continue hide the depths of public-school failure by dumbing down learning standards and easing HS graduation requirements.
And most New Yorkers don’t even realize the gov’s not in charge, but Heastie — who answers only to voters in his Assembly district, plus the Democrats in his conference.
A governor with any interest in honest democratic government and/or excellence in education would use her bully pulpit to call out this nonsense — but New York only has Kathy Hochul.
