Strong corporate interests are trying to destroy unions and public education. They want to earn huge profits from charter schools for which citizens will have to use vouchers funded by our tax dollars. Our taxes should not pad the pockets of charter school CEO's. Many charter schools perform far worse than public schools. Charter schools often hire inexperienced untrained teachers. Governor Cuomo claims he will "improve" public schools in NYS. He is trying to break public education by "rating" our teachers and forcing children to sit for days and days of testing. Your tax dollars are paying for those tests and Cuomo's friend Pearson is pocketing the profits. Politicians claim that U.S. schools are falling behind the rest of the industrialized world, and they claim that it is the fault of teachers and teacher unions. There are very many fallacies in those claims:
1. When the international PISA test scores are corrected to account for socioeconomic status, U.S. public school students actually score ahead of Europeans and Asians.
2. It has been shown that poverty is the #1 predictor of student success academically. The U.S. has a huge gap between rich and poor students.
3. U.S. states with strong teacher unions often have better educational outcomes than those without.
4. Recent data shows that the majority of private charter schools are doing much worse than public schools serving the same population.
Tell the governor we don't need his type of "reform." Send an email or call to let your voice be heard.