Make New York Post a Preferred Source Betty A. Rosa listens as the state's Board of Regents votes on private school requirements in Albany, N.Y. on Sept. 13, 2022. AP State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa is trying to pull off a nasty bit of blackmail; Gov. Kathy Hochul can make her pay for it — and strike a blow for high-quality education at the same time.
Rosa this week issued a public “poverty” plea, claiming the state’s multibillion-dollar school system can’t afford to implement her new, hopelessly watered-down standards for high school graduation without a fresh cash bath.
It’s classic Albany extortion: Cry broke to milk taxpayers for more dough.
Problem is, Hochul is already on record doubting the value of Rosa’s scheme, and even wishing for more power to stop it.
And Rosa (at least rhetorically) just handed her that power: The gov can now use the coming budget negotiations to explicitly defund the transition.
The scheme is terrible: Gone is any need to pass the Regents exams that have been the hallmark of a top-notch New York education for over a century; in are meaningless “assessments” and “portfolios” that will make it easier than ever for cynical administrators to graduate kids with utterly worthless diplomas.
Empire State taxpayers already cough up a jaw-dropping and nation-leading $36,000-plus per pupil — roughly 85% above the national average — for mediocre test scores and vanishing enrollment.
Yet Rosa wants more: “Whatever it takes so equity exists,” she blathers.
The buzzword “equity” gives it all away: She wants cash to fund the progressive hobbyhorse of racial beancounting, not to ensure that schools actually teach.
Money for “expert” consultants (drawn from the right anti-standards circles) to walk school districts through gobbledygook methods for grading portfolios, projects and presentations.
Feed the educational-industrial complex iron triangle: School districts, consultants/coaches, education services firms.
Hochul can, and should, just say No! We’re not funding this garbage.
New York’s students would be better off without Rosa and the rotten Board of Regents she reports to, but the gov would need to wage all-out war to have any hope of such deep reform.
But she can strike one great blow against the toxic education blob by using her budgeting leverage to force Rosa & Co. to drop this drive to destroy the state’s academic standards.
