Editor's note: This post originally appeared in a slightly different form in the Daily News.
Talk about glaciers melting! The high-profile-yet-nearly-immobile education policies and politics of the Empire State may have cracked last week, the result of rapid climate change within New York’s Democratic leadership.
Two changes, actually, both of them dramatic.
The easier one to describe was veteran Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s arrest last Thursday by the FBI on federal corruption charges, accused on multiple counts of using his government position to enrich himself. It’ll take a while for the judicial machinery to clatter and crank.
In the meantime, he has already agreed to temporarily vacate the powerful role that he has occupied and has used to foil, frustrate, delay, and defenestrate many an important education-reform initiative within the state legislature—at least those opposed by the teachers’ unions whose foremost champion he has been.
Whew. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fellow.
Silver’s demise would not, in and of itself, cause New York to raise the cap on charter schools, much less enact a tax-credit scholarship program, both hated by the union and its buddies (a list that extends beyond the speaker). But the week’s other climatic—perhaps climactic—change significantly boosts the prospects of these reforms and more: Governor Andrew Cuomo’s awesome (and radically union-unfriendly) education-reform agenda as laid out in his State of the State address and budget proposals.
The list includes revamped (and tougher) teacher evaluations, more charters, a state-level version of the “Dream Act,” and much else. But its single boldest and most surprising item is the governor’s endorsement of a tax-credit scholarship program so that more young New Yorkers can afford to attend private schools. (That’s as close as the state constitution, with its tough “Blaine Amendment” restrictions on direct aid to religious schools, will allow lawmakers to get to a voucher program.)
Possibly it’s a ploy by Cuomo to roll out something that the teachers’ union hates so much that they’ll wind up having to tolerate some of his other reforms in order to fend off this one. (Such horse trades have occurred before in the history of vouchers and charters.)
Possibly. In the meantime, however, school-choice advocates—and those who care more about the education of children than the interests of adults—should celebrate and applaud.
Cuomo is, to the best of my knowledge, the first Democratic governor ever to propose a program of private school choice for kids and families in his state. Others (in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Arizona, maybe elsewhere) have tolerated this sort of thing when it originated outside of their offices, but this is the first time a state’s Democratic chief exec has taken the lead.
One can say that he follows in the footsteps of Democratic political figures like Colorado’s Roy Romer, Bill Clinton, and—let’s be fair—Barack Obama, who have been outspoken supporters of charter schools.
But this, my friends, is about private schooling. That’s a major crack in the ice cap.
Thanks, Andrew. Bye-bye, Shelly. And may more such glaciers melt. Bring on the warmth.
