Analysis: N.Y. Schools Taking on Landmark Change
By The Associated Press


Albany, N.Y.
The few doors that are open at Shaker High School are meant to allow in only a summer breeze. Desks are stacked in the hallways. The lockers are scrubbed clean, the halls eerily quiet.
But at this high-performing school in suburban Albany and other schools across New York, intense work is under way in the offices of principals and superintendents. There, the face of New York's public school system is changing, perhaps more than at any point in its 199-year history.
By the time students return to class in September, some old school traditions and methods will be changed or threatened, from making it easier to fire teachers, to second guessing school professionals, to forcing consideration of program cuts that could include kindergarten.
In Albany, where the political will for more than a decade was to provide record state aid increases even as local taxes grew at more than twice inflation, the political will now is to control what have become some of the nation's highest property taxes, and risk the wrath of the powerful teachers unions.
"The gravitational forces are moving toward performance and refocusing on students and achievement," Gov. Andrew Cuomo told The Associated Press. "The gravitational forces are moving away from growing the bureaucracy. I'm going to push very hard on that going forward ... the focus has to be on improving student performance."
But what Cuomo sees as a progressive approach to education is viewed as a "hostage-terrorist approach" by the head of the New York State United Teachers union.
NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi faces a confluence of unfunded school accountability requirements of No Child Left Behind begun under President George W. Bush, teacher accountability mandates, hundreds more privately run charter schools under President Barack Obama's Race to the Top funding competition, and a powerful Cuomo.
"It's a conservative, right-wing agenda that is using a sort of hostage-terrorist approach to public service," said Iannuzzi of NYSUT, the state's largest teachers union and for decades a powerful force with the Legislature.
"Unfortunately, a lot of progressive-minded politicians are feeling that they should be engaged in appeasement," he said. "We haven't learned much from history: When you appease terrorists you get more terrorism. That's what we're seeing."
When school resumes in New York:
• School boards will have developed the first job evaluations for teachers and administrators that will include student performance. Even tenured teachers and principals with a pattern of "ineffective" ratings could face termination through an expedited process.
• School boards will begin to look at a list of non-mandated fixtures in schools for possible budget cuts, including whether to have librarians in elementary schools, elective classes for top students, music, art, sports and even kindergarten. Those traditional offerings will become vulnerable as schools plan for their first budgets under a new law that caps local property tax growth to 2 percent, or inflation, whichever is less.
• Cuomo's competition-based funding will begin. School districts will for the first time have to compete for funding, $250 million in the coming budget, based on classroom performance and innovative efficiencies.
• State Education Commissioner John B. King Jr. will issue new regulations to crack down on cheating by teachers, administrators and students on standardized tests following several scandals nationwide.
"I think what we are seeing is a seismic shift in kindergarten through 12th grade education in New York state," said B. Jason Brooks of the Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability, an advocacy group that has spent years lobbying for what he agrees is a new era in public schools.
"We are part of a large national movement and this great to see for a change," Brooks said.
While Brooks and Cuomo look forward to a new era of accountability and waste-cutting, advocates including Maria Fletcher, a parent and PTA activist, foresee a chilled September.
"Is this a change in education? I believe so," said Fletcher of Valley Stream on Long Island, mother of three children who attended public schools and president of the New York State Parent Teacher Association.
"I know there are districts thinking of eliminating or cutting kindergarten programs, maybe going to a half-day," Fletcher said. "What a step backwards."
In April, Cuomo and the Legislature agreed to an historic cut in school aid of 3.5 percent, that after two years of flat state spending which had already forced spending cuts and some layoffs in schools. As part of the package, Cuomo and the Legislature agreed to an $800 million increase in the state's school aid for the 2012-13 fiscal year. But that remains billions behind the state's commitment under a high court ruling that the state underfunded schools for decades.
New York spends $20 billion a year in school aid, one of the highest in the nation, in a $132 billion annual budget.
Schools will become far more dependent on that state aid because the property tax cap will restrict levies unless districts can muster a 60-percent approval in budget votes to suspend it.
"The paradigm has changed," said David Albert of the New York State School Boards Association. "It's no longer about expenses and spending. It's about tax levies. It's about, 'How much are you going to be able to raise?' Not, 'How much are you going to spend on education?'"
That could force school boards to turn to a list of programs not required by the state to eliminate, or share with other districts or the regional BOCES. It includes elementary school librarians, advanced programs for top students, music, art, athletics, nurses in every school building and even kindergarten, which still isn't required in New York.
"I am really so concerned and passionate about this," said Fletcher, holding her 7-month-old grandson, Robert, gurgling as she spoke. "Our children are competing not only for jobs in the state, but nationally. It's very short-sighted."