Andrew Cuomo’s charter epiphany
ALBANY—Once a relative agnostic on charter schools, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is now a full-fledged evangelical.
Though Cuomo has been relatively quiet on the publicly funded and privately run schools for most of his time in his office, he declared last week that charter-school protections are an essential part of the state budget negotiations.
Cuomo has assailed the state's public schools for years, blasting their steep costs, low graduation rates and a system that guaranteed jobs to poor-performing teachers. But he had largely refrained from offering charter schools as a key solution to those problems, instead advocating systemic changes like teacher evaluations in traditional public schools.
Mayor Bill de Blasio's moves to rein in charters, as Cuomo was battling him on other education issues, have changed the governor's rhetoric at lightning speed, highlighted by the governor's decision to take to the Capitol steps to speak to thousands of charter school parents and students who traveled to Albany to protest the mayor's reversal of some charter co-locations.
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2014/03/8542181/andrew-cuomos-charter-epiphany
