Education

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Commission on Education Reform got an earful at a public hearing held at the state Capitol today, as speaker after speaker complained about a statewide school system that they say is in disarray.

Speakers voiced a litany of complaints to the commission, ranging from over-testing of students, excessive teacher bashing, and school districts drowning in debt.

The State University of New York is looking to stem the tide of students who arrive at college unprepared.

An important deadline in the state’s ongoing teacher evaluation process occurred Sunday, but most schools reported they would miss it.  

Cuomo’s proposal to make teacher evaluations public will become law, now that the Senate and Assembly passed the measure on the final day of the legislative session.

Senate Republicans, after a closed door meeting, agreed to take up Gov. Cuomo’s bill to make all evaluations public, without names attached.

Governor Andrew Cuomo says he no longer thinks settling the issue of making teacher evaluations public is “urgent,” and will allow the legislature to leave later this week without an agreement on the matter.

President Barack Obama has proclaimed that STEM education is a national priority.  STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

New York state is looking at ways to improve the STEM education the state's children receive. This kind of education has  become more important in recent years, because that's where the jobs are. However, recent statistics show U.S. achievement in these skills lags behind much of Europe and Asia.

New York state is now one of 19 states that has been granted a waiver that allows for more flexibility when it comes to the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law.

The change will let schools avoid a deadline requiring all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014. 

The Federal Education Department approved the waivers for New York and eight other states earlier this week. Other states won waivers earlier this year.

In New York, arguments over fairness in the funding of public education have been heated for a while. In the current age of austerity, the issue is even more complex—and pressing.

In this week’s Campbell Conversation, Michael Rebell, the executive director of Columbia University’s Campaign for Educational Equity, and a co-counsel in the state’s Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, discusses educational equity—and all that it requires from the educational and social welfare systems.

The thunderstorms that rolled through upstate New York Tuesday afternoon kept George Weiss' plane grounded in New York City.

So Weiss, the philanthropist and founder of Say Yes to Education, decided to drive up to Syracuse in order to make it to a student event Tuesday evening.

He told a crowd at McKinley-Brighton Elementary School Wednesday morning that the long drive was worth it when a student came up to him teary-eyed.

She told Weiss that he had given her a hug two years earlier when she graduated high school. Now, after graduating from a community college with the cost covered by Say Yes, she wanted another hug.

"Any time you see the smile on these kids' faces and the hope," Weiss said. "This is what it's all about, the hope."

For a while now, getting through high school has meant getting through all five of those all-important Regents Exams. But that may be changing.

Amidst an ongoing discussion about how to get more kids to graduation through different pathways, the Board of Regents may be making some changes.

And those changes have a lot to do with one specific exam – The Global History and Geography exam. Unlike other Regents Exams, this one takes place after two full years of cumulative study.

As urban school districts grapple with massive budget deficit, some programs that aren't strict academics go up on the chopping block. A program in the Syracuse City School District, that teaches everything from sex education to stranger danger, is slated to be cut.

Governor Andrew Cuomo named a blue ribbon commission to look at the problems facing education in New York, instructing them to come back with an “action plan” not a “theoretical document.”

The decision for the Syracuse City School District Board of Education Wednesday night was between borrowing millions or cutting hundreds of jobs. Board members chose to balance a $366 million budget by whipping out the credit card.

The make-up of the Syracuse Common Council was different when Thomas Valenti and his firm, Cameron Group, first approached it six years ago, but the opposition to the proposed project is still the same.

Valenti wants to develop a new off-campus bookstore and fitness center for Syracuse University.

In order to do that, he's requesting a 30-year property tax break from the city.

And therein lies the sticking point.

"If you have all of these grand ideas, then you should be able to finance this project," councilor-at-large Helen Hudson says. "We just can't keep excepting all of these entities."