Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signaled on Thursday that he intended to push next year for sweeping changes to the state’s education system, with goals that include making it easier to fire low-performing teachers and increasing the number of charter schools.
In a letter to the state’s departing education commissioner, John B. King Jr., and the chancellor of the Board of Regents, Merryl H. Tisch, Mr. Cuomo’s director of state operations, Jim Malatras, asserted that the performance of the state’s students on a variety of measures, like graduation rates and test scores, was “unacceptable.” He also enumerated pointed questions about subjects like teacher evaluations and tenure.
The first question on the list, for instance, asked, “How is the current teacher evaluation system credible when only 1 percent of teachers are rated ineffective?”
The letter, which cited “special interests,” a clear reference to the major teachers’ unions, suggested that the governor planned to aggressively confront the unions, which did not endorse him in his re-election campaign.
The letter asked Ms. Tisch and Mr. King, who is leaving at the end of the year for a senior job at the federal Education Department, to respond by Dec. 31, so that the governor could incorporate their suggestions into his State of the State address.
The governor does not control the state’s Education Department: The commissioner is appointed by the regents, who are selected by the Legislature. (Mr. Malatras wrote that the setup was “unique” and asked whether it should be changed.)
But the letter indicated that Mr. Cuomo planned to use his considerable power in the budget process and clearly laid out his views as the regents prepared to select Mr. King’s successor.
Education reform groups were nearly celebratory in response to the letter.
“Governor Cuomo continues to show his genuine commitment to our state’s students and is asking all the right questions to get them the education they deserve,” said Jenny Sedlis, the executive director of StudentsFirst NY, a group that advocates tougher teacher evaluations, fewer teacher tenure protections and the creation of more charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run. Several of the group’s board members were major donors to Mr. Cuomo’s re-election campaign.
Union leaders, meanwhile, criticized the governor for not addressing issues like school funding, class sizes and poverty, and accused him of the wholesale adoption of his backers’ agenda.
Teachers’ unions have criticized the growth of charter schools, which tend to be nonunion, as taking resources from traditional schools.
“This letter comes right out of the playbook of the hedge funders for whom education ‘reform’ has become a pet cause and who poured money into the Cuomo re-election campaign,” Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, the New York City teachers’ union, said in a statement.
Through a spokesman, Ms. Tisch responded: “The Board of Regents is enthusiastic about continuing our partnership with the governor to work in the best interests of all our students, and we look forward to responding to the letter from his office.”
The topics of Mr. Malatras’s questions, like the process for removing poor-performing teachers, echoed the agenda of reform advocates. The letter sought opinions about the probationary period for teachers, currently three years, and whether it should be extended; whether teachers should have to be recertified every several years; and whether the cap on the number of charter schools should be raised.
The letter also asked Mr. King and Ms. Tisch what they would do about mayoral control of New York City schools, and what adjustments they would make. The Legislature must consider next year whether to keep schools under the mayor’s control, and the letter is a hint that the governor plans to use the issue in negotiations with Mayor Bill de Blasio over other matters.
Mr. King and Ms. Tisch have overseen a period of rapid change in the state’s education policies, from the rollout of standardized tests aligned to the Common Core curriculum standards to a new teacher evaluation system, both of which have caused enormous controversy and have turned Mr. King into something of a lightning rod among parents and teachers. The new, more difficult tests have caused large drops in passing rates across the state.
Mr. Cuomo, who was originally a strong advocate of both the Common Core and teacher evaluations, has at times shifted in the political winds. This year, he negotiated with the Legislature a measure to prohibit state test scores from appearing on students’ transcripts. He also agreed on a bill protecting teachers from being fired for low test scores for two years.
This week, after new figures showed that 96 percent of teachers received one of the two highest ratings on the state’s new evaluation system, and less than 1 percent got the lowest rating, Mr. Cuomo criticized the process as being too soft on teachers and suggested that he might not sign the bill. But it landed on his desk on Wednesday and, under the arcane rules of the capital, it will become law if he neither signs it nor vetoes it within 10 days.
