Cuomo: Budget Was Victory Over 'Formidable' Opposition

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Wednesday that this year's budget was the hardest he's ever negotiated because of opposition from the teachers union.

"I think we had the most formidable political forces in Albany on the other side. The teacher union is a very powerful political force," he told Susan Arbetter, host of the radio program Capital Pressroom, adding that it's "probably the largest single donor to Albany politicians."

Arbetter pushed back by stating that the charters now actually give more money, to which Cuomo replied, "Is that true? I don't think so year to year, Susan. They're relatively new."

Cuomo didn't get all the education changes he wanted in this year's budget. The new teacher evaluation system doesn't base 50 percent of a teacher's rating on standardized test scores, as he originally proposed, although it does make it harder for teachers to get a good rating if their students don't make progress on their annual tests. The exact formula will be determined by the State Education Department before the end of June. New teachers will also have to wait four years to get tenure instead of the five years proposed by the governor.

"This is a dramatic shift for the system," towards evaluation based on technology and data, Cuomo said. "The system now is basically a seniority-based education system. The assumption was the longer you're there, the better you are. That was seniority. Now we're moving to performance."

Cuomo defended standardized tests as an objective measure in comparing one district to another, and sidestepped a question about whether New York was going in the opposite direction of states and cities that have put less priority on test scores.