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New York, NY — Statewide education advocacy organization StudentsFirstNY today released an ad praising Governor Cuomo and the legislature for enacting important education reforms as a part of this year’s budget agreement and encouraging them to keep going. The ad will run statewide beginning today.

New York, NY – As final negotiations wrap up on the state budget, public school parent activists and students today rallied outside Tweed Courthouse to urge legislators to pass the meaningful education reforms outlined in Governor Cuomo’s education Opportunity Agenda. Parents and students across New York, including grassroots activists organized by education reform advocacy organization StudentsFirstNY and Derrell Bradford, executive director of NYCAN, view Governor Cuomo’s reforms as critical to improving public school options.

"Parents deserve unbiased, unfiltered information about policies affecting their children, so it's unfortunate that the teachers' union controls the messages that are sent through schools. Governor Cuomo's Opportunity Agenda will benefit children tremendously, but the union would rather generate confusion as a shield to protect its own interests. The Governor's policies would ensure we recruit and retain high performing teachers, that we don't give lifetime jobs to teachers who are not effective, that we can remove low performers from classrooms, and that the interests of students are put first."

-- Tenicka Boyd, StudentsFirstNY Director of Organizing

New York, NY – StudentsFirstNY today issued a brief analysis comparing the difference in teacher effectiveness between New York City’s high poverty and low poverty districts following the State Education Department’s recent release of teacher
evaluation data.

"It's clear that special interests are hell bent on making sure parents and teachers don't have accurate information on teacher effectiveness. When teacher evaluations bear zero resemblance to student learning, which is the case in 4 out of the 5 big school districts, it makes a strong case for Governor Cuomo's improvements to the system. It is shocking that you can have a district like Syracuse with 97% of teachers rated effective or above when student proficiency is in the single digits. It's also shocking to see districts like Beacon, that gamed the evaluations so there's a swing from 24% of teachers effective to 100%. Governor Cuomo is right to design a statewide system that parents and educators can count on as fair and reliable."

-- Jenny Sedlis, Executive Director, StudentsFirstNY

New York, NY – StudentsFirstNY today released a web video in support of Governor Cuomo’s education Opportunity Agenda. The video is a part of the group’s grassroots and digital #ForOpportunity campaign to bring together parents advocating for fundamental reform to fix New York’s broken education system. 

The video features State Assemblyman Karim Camara, New York City Councilman Robert Cornegy, StudentsFirstNY parent advocates, and NYCAN Executive Director Derrell Bradford who spoke at a rally of 400 district public school parents in support of the Governor last week.

The video can viewed here:

StudentsFirstNY parent advocate Au Hogan said: “I support the Governor’s plan because he understands the same old status quo is failing too may kids. Our kids deserve a better chance.”

StudentsFirstNY parent advocate Anyta Brown said: “We must let Albany know that we are to be heard and we are a force to be reckoned with. So therefore, I say, what do we want? We want opportunity, and we want it now!”

"While clearly not Mayor de Blasio's priority, the state of our city in 2015 and every year depends on a public education system that's currently in crisis. Rather than address the fundamental problems damaging our schools, the Mayor has lowered expectations, weakened accountability, and unsuccessfully attempted to restrict parent choice. We can only hope that this year the Mayor spends more time listening to the families he promised to serve than he does currying favor with his political allies."

-- Jenny Sedlis, StudentsFirstNY Executive Director

Albany, New York – StudentsFirstNY, a statewide education reform advocacy organization, today was joined by public school parents and advocates in testifying before a New York State Joint Committee on Education in support of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Opportunity Agenda.