Rescinding My Invite to Governor Andrew Cuomo
First off, Governor Andrew Cuomo is never getting an invitation to my classroom nor would I want him anywhere near my students.
The most likely scenario is that he stops in for 10 minutes, listens to me do some math, stares at me coldly with the kids whispering “Who is this guy?” to each other, smirking with an “I told you that I’d drop by” look. Then, he’d ask me for time and I’d shake my head and his people would look at me like, “Come on …” and I’d begrudge it and say, “Make it quick,” and then he’d make a bold proclamation about the good work we (!) are doing to improve my students’ test scores and I’d snicker loud and roll my eyes and then he’d strut out of my classroom the way some guy in the suit who drops an explosive dump in the bathroom does. I’d gag shortly thereafter, wash my hands, and hope I never remember that day happening to me.
I’m not backing that.
Cuomo doesn’t seem at all swayed by the faces and names of students, educators, and parents doing hard work in arduous conditions, but will sweep whole commissions under a rug for friends with nice ties and good ties to him. He already invades our homes with his faux-ratory every morning, pretending that his solution for public schools will serve “every child” even though his calls for equity never include any tax restructuring methods or fulfilling school funding mandates. To wit, another commercial that plays alongside his education speech excerpt features his StartUpNYC program that offers an ingratiating incentive for companies to come to the state that include no business, corporate, sales, property, state, or local taxes for ten full years.
How he purposefully neglects funding in favor of his corporate friends doesn’t stun me in the least. How his finger can contort so the index faces teachers befuddles me to no end.
He’s become so predictable, too. How is it possible that he might want to walk into my classroom, listen to the discussions, take in some of the non-Common Core aligned banter, watch students produce math work, and think exactly half my job is to prepare students for a six-hour exam? If ramping up the testing accountability measure to 50% is a means of doubling the percentage of ineffective teachers (after his own bill didn’t fire enough teachers to his liking), where, pray tell, will he find educators that would want to fill the 10% – 20% of staff he’d like to fire? (Also, how does he make a political party for women without holding into account that most teachers, by a grand majority, are women?) How does testing my students more legitimize the students’ learning when you’re reducing our jobs to test preppers? How does he think driving public funds for private entities is the same as equity, as if the floundering donations of a select few combined with paltry public education funds is equivalent to a robust and reliable funding source that gives all schools equitable resources? If you’re not about improving working conditions for every child, then how do you think your corporatist ideas for school reform will make equity possible?
I doubt it.
So please, don’t visit my classroom. My door has now been open, sometimes reluctantly, to adults of many backgrounds, some well-intentioned and some not-so-well-intentioned. In the time I’ve spent harboring these visitors peering through me and my students like my classroom was a fish tank, I’ve learned that the most powerful visitors rarely came to support our efforts. Save for one or two superintendents, they came to find fault with nary a step for improvement. It might astonish Cuomo to know that teachers crave timely, informed, and powerful critique Rescinding My Invite to Governor Andrew Cuomo | The Jose Vilson: