Braggedy Andy Shoots Himself in the Foot, Again.

Braggedy Andy Cuomo wants to take education here in New York State out to the woodshed. Well he wants to take teachers out there but if he succeeds in any of the Pineapple Hare brained schemes his corporate "reformer" pals are feeding him he's going to put a serious beatdown on learning here in the Empire State. Still reeking from his disastrously histrionic "get tough on guns" soiree,  pushed through in the middle of the night like a broke down Russian Lada through an intersection in Gdansk, Governor Campaign Mode is now braying that teachers in the land of Excelsior will have to take a bar exam. 

Cuomo inspired politicians push through Lada-esque gun bill

Somehow Cuomo and like minded friends of high stakes testing seem to believe that more testing is the solution to any and everything that ails education.  Once again the test manufacturers will get their chance to fleece taxpayers and the lucrative edubiz trade scores yet another coup. If you're keeping score at home you'll note that another consistency can be found in the Gov's message and that is the common eduformer's assertion that teachers are to blame for everything. They must be shoddy workers and lackluster people in general to get all that education and settle for low paying inglorious work teaching someone else's kids. So now teachers will be edified with a NY State bar exam that will instill excellence and make teachers more businessy and lawyery. Where do I get my leather folio and tan cashmere overcoat and the Kiss My Ass sticker for my beamer? Once again the business cowboys want to cure everything by recreating the world in their image. If we wanted to take bar exams we would have had Nelson Rockerfeller get us into law school like Dick Parsons did, you know the CEO of the School Reform Committee? I wonder though if we would all have been able to come out Valedictorians or better yet how we could have got into a law school when we never finished a bachelor's degree as Mr Upward Failure Parsons didn't? 
Ahhh,  but that's the problem with Cuomovision. He is so accustomed to associating with these clowns whose connections started them on third base while they brag about hitting triples that he, like so many of the elect, doesn't have a shit's clue what we do, why we do it or what makes us tick. But he is convinced and I am sure his dear union concessionaire pal Randi Slimegarten, another lawyer, has assured him that testing us will almost make us look legit and acceptable to businessy succcessy types like them. 
As if the bar exam isn't asinine enough, hot air escaping from Albany's Reformer in Chief is also calling for merit pay to "reward the best teachers." Who gets to decide who the best teachers are and by what standard will these pedagogues be measured? Oh I am sure that's none a my beezwax and brighter minds than mine will figure it all out. The fact that pretty much all available research on attempts to drag this car salesman's incentivized dynamic into the world of ABC's and 123's shows merit pay for teachers to be a dismal flop does not slow the Governor for one second. And along with his failed merit pay and his pretentious bar exam the guy also believes Value Added Measures will be an integral part of the assessments even though they have somewhere between a 50% - 90% error rate. I wonder if Braggedy Andy's broker suggested he get in on some stock with that kind of track record how much of his own cash he'd lay down? But hey it's just for firing teachers so who cares if it's riddled with failure right?

Cuomo for President in 2016? Outlook is a little grim Andy...

Now that he's alienated and radicalized about every sane gun owner in New York and the majority of my neighbors here in Eden and he's all ready pissed off teachers and organized labor in general, I have to wonder as his base disappears like Michelle Rhee's credibility, who will be left to vote this jackass into Pennsylvania Avenue in 2016? Ed Reformers? A handful of Manhattan billionaires? John King and Katie Campos? Sorry Andrew but you've really drawn a bullseye on your chances if you'll pardon the pun.