POLITICS: Gov. Hochul’s ‘back to basics’ call in math instruction is further evidence of State Ed’s lack of accountability

It’s time to “get back to basics” in math, Gov. Kathy Hochul says as she calls for sensible curricular and instruction changes.

She’s right; too bad she has zero power over New York’s education apparatus.

Progressive “reforms” last century put control of the State Education Department (SED) in the hand of a Board of Regents appointed by a complicated process that now effectively lets the speaker of the state Assembly call the shots.

And Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie had to mortgage his soul to the teachers unions and miscellaneous lefty ideologues to get the votes to become speaker back in 2015 — so good sense and hard fact have nothing to do with how SED steers K-12 education.

So all Hochul can do is push legislation requiring SED to offer best practices for teaching math and guidance on selecting math curricula; even if that law passes, she can’t stop the educrats from defining “best practices” however they like.

If the gov really wanted to help, she’d use her bully pulpit to embarrass SED into rescinding idiocy like its recent math guidelines telling teachers to stop giving timed quizzes because they overstress some kids.

Better yet, she’d hector the Regents into admitting that top charter schools blow the regular public schools away on state and national math tests, and mandating that poor-performing districts adopt the “best practices” of those charters.

She might also call out new NYC Chancellor Kamar Samuels for pushing to to “improve” high- and middle-school math instruction barely 18 months after Mayor Eric Adams’ team introduced his solid NYC Solves math reforms.

If he wants to make a positive difference, Samuels should get NYC Solves going in elementary grades (as Adams failed to do), not trash it. 

New York spends vastly more per student on K-12 public education, with utterly mediocre results; families are fleeing the city’s public schools even as state law forces the system to mindlessly hire more teachers of dubious quality.

Someday, maybe New York will have a governor who’s willing to call out the obscene disservice the Albany power structure does for the state’s schoolchildren.