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I recently attended the New NY Education Commission (Who came up with that name?) meeting in Buffalo. For those of you outside of the Empire State, this commission pretty much summarizes the current state of education reform across the country: the real stakeholders,students, parents and teachers, have little voice in the dialogue. This commission was started by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo because of his misleading and false statement that New York is 38th in educational results.  The Commission is stacked with corporate and charter school types, with a few university leaders.  No teachers, no students.   Randi Weingarten, AFT President, is a member of this commission, but was not in attendance at the Buffalo meeting.

"The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people." Surely everyone recognizes the 5-word phrase. Some of you may have garbled the phrase on occasion - I have - into something like 'Our schools are drowning in a rising tide of mediocrity." But that's not what "A Nation at Risk" said back in 1983. The report, issued by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, was a call to action on many levels, not an attack on schools and colleges. "Our society and its educational institutions seem to have lost sight of the basic purposes of schooling," the Report states, immediately after noting that America has been "committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament." (emphasis added) Schools aren't the villain in "A Nation at Risk;" rather, they are a vehicle for solving the problem. Suppose that report were to come out now? What sort of tide is eroding our educational foundations? "A rising tide of (fill in the blank)?" This is a relevant question because sometime in the next few months another National Commission, this one on "Education Equity and Excellence," will issue its report. This Commission clearly hopes to have the impact of "A Nation at Risk." However, the two Commissions could hardly be more different. The 1983 Commission was set up to be independent, while the current one seems to be joined at the hip to the Department of Education.

Attorney and whistleblower Kathleen Carroll was fired by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing CTC in September 2010 after she began to expose the systemic corruption and cronyism at the agency. The commission plays a critical role in education in California certifying teachers and also approving education training programs. Carroll discovered that Agency officials and the board members were also involved in planning the systemic destruction of public education in California and how this agency operated to carry out this role. They were involved in spending millions of dollars on private charter schools that some staff had personal interests in. The commission managers also bullied the staff and created a reign of terror at the agency. This commission is also under the direct control of the Executive and Governor Jerry Brown but he has remained silent about the scandal.

Seeking to address complaints about the makeup of his new education reform commission, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has added five additional members to the panel in advance of its first meeting later this month. The new appointees include a parent advocate from Rochester, a newly elected school board member from the Adirondacks and a district superintendent from Central New York - three constituencies that the governor was criticized for not including on the panel when he announced it in April. The commission, which is being led by the former Citigroup chairman Richard D. Parsons, has also gained two more well-known names from Wall Street: Sanford I. Weill, another former Citigroup chairman, and Stanley F. Druckenmiller, a billionaire hedge fund manager.

The office of Gov. Andrew Cuomo is touting some unflattering figures about New York's educational system today-"73 percent of New York's students graduate from high school and 37 percent are college ready." The stat is contained in the official press release announcing the creation of the New York Education Reform Commission, a group that will meet across the state to gather input on education and then make recommendations to the governor by Dec. 1 2012, or, "such other date as the Governor shall advise the Commission." So you know expect recommendations on their time. Here is the full release from Cuomo's office

"Good afternoon Chairman Parsons and members of this distinguished commission. My name is Michael Mulgrew and I am the President of the United Federation of Teachers. I commend Governor Cuomo for his leadership and commitment to provide a quality education for every child in our state and I thank the commission for the opportunity to testify before you today."

Governor Cuomo announced the formation of his New New York Education Reform Commission.  We are appalled that Governor Cuomo has now formed a so-called "education commission" that fails to include even one parent, parent representative, or school board member representative from anywhere in this great state of New York.

The Cuomo Education Commission had its first and only public hearing in NYC for three scant hours this morning and they packed us all in a small cafeteria room at Hostos College in the Bronx.

"This past summer, New York high school Principals Carol Burris and Harry Leonadartos attempted to testify about school reform before New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Education Commission in New York City.  They were not given the opportunity to speak, and they wrote about it in this post. Yesterday the commission - which is chaired by former Citibank chairman Dick Parsons - visited Long Island and Burris was allowed to speak. She received a standing ovation when she was done. Below is her testimony."

Like subprime mortgages, for-profit colleges are a scam driven by payment of commissions to sales staff known as recruiters. The payment of commissions to high-pressure salespeople is so central to the scam that the umbrella trade group for for-profits, the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU), has sued the federal government to overturn its ban on incentive pay. It cannot be stated strongly enough: for-profit colleges could not engage in the ongoing exploitation of students and theft of federal money without the direct cooperation and assistance of the federal government in what can only be termed an immoral economy. The same forces that demonize everything government does or attempts to do are busy feeding from the government trough. The hypocrisy is untenable, the federal subsidies unfathomable and the lack of criminal prosecution unconscionable. For-profit colleges are a kickback scheme where politicians enact favorable legislation and regulations that allow for-profit colleges to maintain access to student loans and grant money. The for-profit colleges then "give" a small cut of the federal money back to the politicians to enact favorable legislation.

Earlier this week, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the membership of the Education Reform Commission he promised in his State of the State address in early January. It will be chaired by Richard Parsons, a retired chair of Citigroup, who was once an assistant counsel to Governor Nelson Rockefeller, among other roles. The members include State Education Commissioner John King, the Chancellors of the State and City University systems, the Chairs of the Assembly and Senate Education Committees, and many accomplished and impressive people from the non-profit and higher education sectors. More than a few leaders in public education have remarked, however, on the absence of anyone currently working in a public school or serving on a school board in the state.

This is an interesting question: Is the New York Board of Regents now toast? Or is it actually chopped liver? Either way, it doesn't matter. When Governor Andrew Cuomo appointed a commission and assigned the most consequential powers of the Regents to the commission, he neutered the Regents. Peter Goodman, a longtime observer of city and state politics, speculates on this question and leaves little doubt

I've got to hand it to charter school authorizer and former lobbyist, Greg Richmond for coming up with this great hustle. A law recently pass by the Illinois state legislature created his new charter school agency called the Illinois State Charter School Commission which has the power to create new charter schools even when local school districts oppose them. The commission also has the power to monitor the same charters it authorizes. Richmond is the commission's chairman.

Governor Cuomo's commission on education has an opportunity to change the direction of school reform.

Gov. Cuomo, in his second state-of-state address Wednesday, will accuse New York's schools of being unaccountable and announce a commission to come up with reforms, the Daily News has learned.

"Okay, it's not entirely surprising to find mind-boggling ignorance conveyed in the editorial pages of the New York Post. Today's example comes to us in an Op-Ed written in response to a report released by the Alliance for Quality Education. Usually, I'd just let it pass. It's the Post after all. But, for two important reasons I just had to address this one.  First, the editorial was written by a member of the Governor's Education Reform Commission.  Second, the editorial made use of our School Funding Fairness report to make its most absurd claim. "

Philadelphia public schools are on the operating table, reeling from a knockout blow of heavy state  budget cuts. It was too much to bear after decades of underfunding and mismanagement at the hands of shortsighted Philadelphians and mean-spirited politicians in Harrisburg. So the District is today announcing that it's going to call it quits. Its organs will be harvested, in search of a relatively vital host. "Philadelphia public schools is not the School District," Chief Recovery Officer Thomas Knudsen told a handful of reporters at yesterday's press conference laying out the five-year plan proposed to the School Reform Commission. "There's a redefinition, and we'll get to that later."  He got to it: talk about "modernization," "right-sizing," "entrepreneurialism" and "competition." Forty schools would close next year, and six additional schools would be closed every year thereafter until 2017. Closing just eight schools this year prompted an uproar. Anyhow, the remaining schools would get chopped up into "achievement networks" where public or private groups compete to manage about 25 schools, and the central office would be chopped down to a skeleton crew of about 200. District HQ has already eliminated about half of the 1,100-plus positions that existed in 2010. 

Governor Cuomo's new blue-ribbon school reform commission has been criticized for its lack of parents, teachers and school board members.   But as Gotham Schools pointed out here, Cuomo did appoint one school board member, Eduardo Marti, my colleague on the NYC citywide school board, a.k.a the Panel for Educational Policy.  As is typical for the eight-member mayoral bloc on the Panel, Marti has generally remained quiet during Panel meetings.  But even his limited comments suggest he supports an extremist agenda for the state's schools.

Declaring that "government has failed to do what government should be doing," Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo moved on Monday to assert his influence over New York State's education policy, appointing a former Citigroup chairman to lead a new commission charged with improving student performance.

Sometime soon we can expect a report from the Council on Foreign Relations' Independent Task Force on U.S. Education Reform and National Security, chaired by Joel Klein and Condoleezza Rice. The panel started its work in April 2011 and was charged, according to the council's Web site, with "evaluating the U.S. public education system within the context of national security." Can you guess what the report - which may be released next week - will say? In fact, knowing who headed the commission means that we can do better than just guess.