“Your move, Governor – don’t blow it”
by Bob McManus, Columnist
New York Post
January 13, 2012
Mike Bloomberg didn’t precisely call Andrew Cuomo’s public-education bluff yesterday — but he sure did cover the governor’s bet. What happens next isn’t likely to be pretty.
The centerpiece of the mayor’s theatrical State of the City Address was public-school reform; specifically, he called out Albany for its shameful refusal to establish credible rules for rooting out bad teachers.
The issue is a perennial.
Mayors, governors and cockeyed-optimist reformers have been advancing schemes for dealing with rotten teachers for a very long time. Every proposal earns a horselaugh and a hearty “Like hell you will” from the teachers unions — and that’s it until the next time.
Not to wear out the obvious, but the unions rule the roost in Albany, for good reason: They have long attention spans, they pay very close attention to detail, they are filthy rich, and they are utterly without scruple regarding the purchase of round-heeled politicians.
Now Bloomberg, whose own short attention span and lack of regard for detail has near-to-scuttled his once supremely promising public-school reform agenda, has apparently had enough.
Yesterday, he said he’s going to reach into 33 failing city schools and remove as many underperforming teachers as the law will allow — up to 50 percent of each school’s faculty, he said.
He’s offering some carrots, too — not that they are important. The unions have demonstrated time and again that they’ll grab premium pay if nobody has to work too hard for it, but that they’ll defend incompetence to the death.
So, next stop — the courts.
No matter.
For what Bloomberg really did yesterday was toss a grenade in Cuomo’s lap — with the hope, if not the expectation, that when it explodes, some of the shrapnel will hit Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.
The governor, in his own annual address last week, declared himself to be chief lobbyist for New York’s public-school pupils — to which Silver responded by cleaving even closer to the teachers unions.
Gubernatorial rhetoric followed by legislative inertia, that is.
As opposed to mayoral rhetoric followed by — it is devoutly to be hoped — substantive, sustained action.
If Bloomberg starts yanking subpar teachers from classrooms, Cuomo may feel the need to take substantive action of his own. And who knows? — maybe even Silver actually will be embarrassed into doing something for students.
Certainly Cuomo is capable of joining. He’s smart, aggressive and fully cognizant of the corrupting influence of union money in Albany.
Indeed, if there is to be any long-term public-school reform in New York, it will have to come by gubernatorial initiative.
Cuomo can lead the way. Will he?