Dick Hubert’s Worldview: A visit with State Senator Shelley Mayer and a tough analysis of NYS school standards

November 27, 2024 at 12:02 a.m.

State Senator Shelley Mayer

The Fall academic semester is as good a time as any to examine how well our public schools are preparing students for the next step in their lives, be it a college or university or trade school education, the job market, the military, or a year off.

That’s my inspiration for sharing a revealing meeting I attended last week at her White Plains office with the politically and educationally powerful chair of the New York State Senate Education Committee, our own Senator Shelley Mayer, and a Westmore News Opinion Page contributor and Rye Brook resident, Roberta R. Schaefer. 

On the docket were Schaefer’s concerns about what she considers the poor yet expensive status of New York State public school education and what, if anything, Mayer can do in her Senate role to influence the Board of Regents and steer public education to better student outcomes.

Most surprising for me: at the near end of our one-hour get-together, I was so concerned about the status of Mayer’s statewide educational power (not that much in her self-admitted view) that I found myself wanting to promote her via the media into the closest thing to an elected educational czar, someone the general public and especially school parents could hold accountable if student performance and educational policies go off the rails.

And I remember the last politician who tried to achieve that status just for the public schools in his own city: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who wanted that responsibility and had a battle royal with the Governor and the entire State Legislature before he got it.

Schaefer’s indictment of the Regents
and NYS education in general

Mayer listened quietly as Schaefer laid out her critique point by point.

To quote from Schaefer’s notes:

“New York’s per pupil spending has been the highest in the nation since about 2005 with mediocre results and very little, if any, academic improvement for decades. The changes in graduation requirements just approved by the Regents will require a massive overhaul of the entire system.

“The purpose of public education has been changed from raising academic achievement for all students (No Child Left Behind) to Equity defined as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Is this what parents, businesses, and colleges want given the divisiveness DEI has caused in the workplace, in colleges, in the military, such that it is being cut back, and even eliminated in many places?

“What is the cost? It is likely to cost millions if not billions. There has been no public discussion of how much or where it will come from. How many hires to work on transformation of high schools? What about professional development?

“There will be multiple pathways to graduation: Regents exams no longer required but will remain as one pathway. How many pathways will be required for graduation? For example, can you do four years of internships? Who will set the criteria for whether a project or an internship qualifies as credit toward graduation? The Department of Education? Each district? Can you develop objective criteria for these pathways, or will it all be at the discretion of a teacher? How will the colleges evaluate NY state graduates? How can you ensure a coherent academic program where students are actually learning subject matter--material that we expect high school graduates to know?

“The current plan is to establish a pilot program in a few schools. Will the Regents wait long enough to get successful results before revamping the entire system?”

“Are we training activists or training kids to know something” was one of the key issues Schaefer raised.

“How will employers judge job applicants who have gone through this process?” she asked Mayer.

Schaefer also pointed out that New York is one of two states where the Governor doesn’t have a say in educational policy.

Mayer’s concerns

About 15 minutes into our meeting, Mayer started to get some of her frustrations about the Regents and education in NYS on the table.

She noted that Republicans have taken virtually no role in choosing the 17 Regent members, who are picked by the Legislature.

So much for joint legislative input into the choice of who sits on the Board.

The Regent for our area is Francis G. Wills, who retired in 2010 as superintendent off schools in Briarcliff Manor. 

Mayer stated that both the Governor and the Legislature have no way of holding the Regents accountable.

“For us in the Legislature who fight for the money for the schools, we, and particularly me, I want better outcomes across the board. … Not by measurement alone. I want kids to come out of high school able to engage in the world at whatever level is appropriate but have the skills to do so.”

Mayer firmly pointed out: “I am not on the Board of Regents. Our legislature does not have control of curriculum, much as we have tried, and we’ve stuck our foot into it. And we’ve had a lot of conflict. That’s supposed to be controlled by local Boards of Education, which I have trouble with too. Some of them make terrible decisions.”

“… but right now, unless we change the constitution, we’re not going to be able to have a gubernatorially appointed Education Commissioner.” (The Commissioner of Education, Betty A. Rosa, is appointed by the Regents.)

Mayer noted that “I do not have a voice in how the Regents determine things.”

She emphasized to Schaefer: “I am concerned, as you are, that we not loosen the standards.”

Schaefer countered that at least the Regents tests show that a student has “learned a certain body of material.”

Mayer said with some satisfaction that the Regents are going to require that graduates show they have a degree of financial literacy. “This is a good development,” she said. “You need well rounded kids with substance.”

Mayer tried to show some support for the Regents’ position, while understanding Schaefer’s criticisms.

“Are there better ways of determining how a student moves on?” she asked. “I have concerns about leaving standardized tests behind. The Regents came to this conclusion after five years of talking to people.…I think there are legitimate concerns about throwing out or eliminating a standardized test for graduation. But I also think there are legitimate concerns about having a single pathway to graduation. …This has not been a successful model.”

The educational rut
we’re all stuck in

By this point, I’m sure you’d agree that we’re all stuck with the Regents, like it or not.

Schaefer’s argument that New York spends more than any other state on a per pupil basis for public education and has some of the worst results for that investment in the nation can’t be disputed.

That may be why parents with the financial means and educational sensitivity flock to public school districts with high performance records and standards and avoid, if possible, the Mt. Vernons and Greenburghs of this state.

Would a statewide property tax to support schools, as Vermont has, be a solution to this economic segregation? “I am open to the state picking up more of the costs of the schools and localities less,” said Mayer. “I’m open to that, and I don’t know if we can get it.”

But equal money doesn’t guarantee equal educational opportunity. As I demonstrated to a national television audience back in 1972 with my documentary “Class and the Classroom,” if the parents demand of their children and their teachers quality educational outcomes, educational funding, sleek facilities, and more will not matter in the vast majority of public schools. The socio-economic background of the children, their families, and their friends at school is a crucial difference.

(As I‘ve written in this column in the past (https://westmorenews.com/news/2023/feb/16/dick-huberts-worldview-sen-mayer-squares-off-with-/), charter schools like the tax supported Classical Charter Schools in the Bronx, which service minority populations and have waiting lists for admission, have outstanding academic records. But the teachers’ unions and those beholden to them have seen to it that their number is limited.)

Mayer is not of a mind to go to war with the Regents. Her primary concern is and remains school funding.

I wrapped up our session by suggesting that it would be great if she could be an elected educational czar, someone the media and parents statewide would instantly turn to as a crusader for the children, and not the bureaucracies and the unions that seem to hold too much sway over education in this state and beyond.

Mayer pointed out that “the media” is in a drastic state of decline and she has to deal with “the world that is before me.”

At which point, there’s not much more that either Schaefer or I could say.

We were left to commiserate over the current state of schooling in the state.

Mayer said that when she goes to visit schools and is introduced as a State Senator, today’s students are usually baffled--the only kind of Senator they even know about is in Washington.

It was at this point we all shared a collective frustration about the lack of civics education and the dangers of turning out an ignorant electorate.

My motto since I was in high school has been: “An Informed Public is The Foundation of Freedom.”

If freedom passes us by in our country, and an ill-informed public ensures that it can and might, remember Shelley Mayer—an educational czar we should have had, at least in New York, and will never have.

Dick Hubert, a retired television news producer-writer-reporter living in Rye Brook, has been honored with the Peabody Award, the DuPont Columbia Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award.

Editor’s Note: This column, written by Dick Hubert, represents his opinion and not that of this newspaper.