For Immedite Release: Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Contact: B. Jason Brooks, Director of Research and Communications

(518) 383-2598

(pdf)

Statements by B. Jason Brooks, Director of Research:

“Today’s hearing by the New York Education Reform Commission was a lost opportunity. Panelists – made up primarily of representatives of teachers, superintendents, administrators, school board members, and politicians – failed to call for the innovative, dramatic policies needed to drive an overhaul of the state’s education system. Little, if anything, new was presented: repeated calls from public education’s entrenched special interests for more funding and a repeal of the property tax cap did nothing to inspire the commission with the vision it needs to rebuild the public education system from the ground up. Bold reforms are needed, including expanding open enrollment, offering students trapped in failing schools with vouchers to transfer to better-performing public or private schools, expanding mayoral control to city school districts across the state, and enacting “parent trigger” legislation that empowers parents to redesign local failing schools. We’ve done more-of-the-same for years, and it doesn’t work. It is time to try something new.”

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