• Blog posts over the past week (NCLB waivers, An interview with the Commissioner, 2-year School Aid funding)
• Newsday on teacher evaluations
• More on test security
• Governor Cuomo vetoes school district bills
• GOP candidates on education
• “Other” property tax issues

Blog posts over the past week (NCLB waivers, An interview with the Commissioner, 2-year School Aid funding)
Since last week’s Home Room blog post, we posted pieces on

• President Obama’s No Child Left Behind Act waiver initiative,
• our interview with State Education Commissioner John King, and
• the implications of two-year School Aid funding.

Newsday on teacher evaluations
Long Island’s Newsday has a well-done piece on implementation of the new teacher/principal evaluation requirements.

Unfortunately, a paid subscription is required to read the article, but includes quotes from the Co-Chair of the Council’s Assessment Subcommittee, jack Bierwirth of Herricks:

“At no time in my career have I seen so many high-stakes things in the air at exactly the same time,” said John Bierwirth, the superintendent of Herricks schools with more than 40 years as a educator, mostly on the Island.

“The parallel I would draw is I see a lot of kids signing up for more courses than they should. And I tell them, ‘You can probably take most of these courses simultaneously, but you probably can’t take all of them simultaneously and do well,’ ” said Bierwirth, who is a member of a state-appointed advisory task force on teacher evaluations.

and from the Co-Chair of the Council’s Curriculum and Instruction Committee, Lorna Lewis of East Williston:

“What we have not planned for is the enormous financial burden that the new legislation has imposed on each of our districts,” wrote Lewis, who chairs a curriculum committee for the New York State Council of School Superintendents. “I am sure there were good intentions for enacting this legislation, but it is now a runaway train and we cannot afford it.”

More on test security
In last week’s Home Room post, I wrote extensively about the State Education Department’s actions and proposals to improve security and combat cheating on state assessments.

One point of the post was to stress that some of the items are proposals for further consideration by the Board of Regents, they have not yet been approved.

The proposals include centralizing scanning and scoring and barring teachers from proctoring tests for their own students or in their own certification area.  It’s not clear how the latter proposal is supposed to work in an elementary school.

On Tuesday last week, the New York Times published an editorial supportive of SED’s efforts, but cautioning,

Cash-strapped districts, hobbled by a new state property tax cap that makes it extremely difficult for them to raise new revenue, are already cutting academic programs and cannot bear new expenses. If the Education Department moves ahead with these necessary reforms, the governor and the Legislature must find the money to pay for it.

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle ran a similar editorial on Saturday, again citing the tax cap as a consideration and observing, “Regents should know that another unfunded mandate is the last thing districts need.”

On Saturday, the Times reported that SED acknowledged that it has been conducting “erasure analysis” to detect cheating on state tests, after saying for several years that it did not do so and lacked the funding to start.

State Education Commissioner John King sent a letter to superintendents dated Sunday, September 25 explaining that erasure analysis had been conducted on only eight of 229 regents Exams administered since 2008.

Commissioner King wrote,

Obviously, this was not an in-depth, large scale pilot of erasure analysis, nor did it rise to the level of a major finding or report.

But he added,

even this small body of evidence reinforces the larger message of the Department’s comprehensive test integrity review launched in August 2011 shortly after I became Commissioner: we need to take strong steps to ensure the integrity of New York State tests.

Governor Cuomo vetoes school district bills
Last week, Governor Cuomo vetoed eight bills which would have allowed individual school districts to avert losses of state aid due to procedural errors in their handling of aid claims.

In some cases the aid losses are large and the penalties seem out of proportion to the district’s mistakes.

For example, Central Islip now stands to lose $42 million in Building Aid because of the failure to file final cost reports on time.

In his veto of the Central Islip legislation and three other bills, the Governor notes that a mandate relief provision in the property tax cap legislation sets up a procedure to “to ease the school building aid penalties for late filing of final cost reports.”

But the veto message acknowledges that the mechanism is available only prospectively, and concludes, “The state budget would provide a broader context and be the most appropriate venue to address these issues.”

GOP candidates on education
Writing in Time, Andrew Rotherham grades Republican presidential candidates for their stands on education issues.  He gives the highest grade to former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman (B-) and lowest grade (F), to Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

“Other” property tax issues
The Buffalo News ran two articles on property tax issues other than how the tax cap might affect school districts.

One explains how a new cap limiting growth in STAR property tax exemption benefits is giving homeowners unpleasant surprises when they open their school tax bills.

The other reports on how towns are dealing with their tax cap.  Most municipalities have January 1 starts to their fiscal years, so the State Comptroller’s Office and State Tax Department have focused on how to apply the law to those entities first.

The article offers this interpretation of how the cap applies differently to towns and schools,

But in the end, it is very easy for most towns to get around the 2 percent tax cap and collect more taxes.

All they need is 60 percent of the Town Board to approve the higher taxes. Then the board must hold a public hearing on overriding the cap before voting on the budget. School districts will have a much more difficult time. To override the cap, their budgets must be approved by 60 percent of the residents voting on them.

But Drescher [an accountant] said town boards must consider political realities in overriding the cap.

“I don’t know as you want to do it every year,” he said. “How do you justify it?”

The Middletown Times Herald Record provides expanded treatment of the complexities of school district equalization rates and the new STAR limitations.

Senator Flanagan, a member of the restored Republican majority, represents most of the northwestern corner of Suffolk County (the Town of Smithtown and portions of Huntington and Brookhaven).

Newsday reports,

“I’m very happy to be given the opportunity; I understand the importance of it,” said Flanagan, ticking off property taxes, mandate relief, school assessments and charter schools as some of his priorities. He also acknowledged that, with New York facing a $10-billion budget shortfall, the committee might be in the position of school-aid freezes or reductions rather than increases.

“I will stick to the principle that we need to incorporate fairness and equity” for all regions in whatever funding decisions the legislature makes, said Flanagan, who led the Corporations, Authorities and Commissions Committee until Democrats took over the chamber in 2009.

Outgoing Chair Suzi Oppenheimer will serve as the ranking (i.e., leading) Democrat on the Committee.

We congratulate Senator Flanagan on his selection and look forward to working with him.

We also thank Senator Oppenheimer for her efforts over the past two years to reduce mandates on schools and to enable wider use of BOCES services.

You can listen here.  My part starts about 25 minutes in and runs 10 minutes.  I was followed by Buffalo superintendent James Williams.

Monday’s article carried the title, “Cuomo Vows Offensive Against Labor Unions.”

“Paladino Threatens Shutdown if Budget Is Late” is the title of today’s article.

The Times also presents audio clips from each interview, including their thoughts on education

As recited below, Mr. Cuomo offers some specific ideas on a new approach to education funding.  He expresses enthusiasm for the incentive approach in the federal Race to the Top program.

The Cuomo article begins,

Andrew M. Cuomo will mount a presidential-style permanent political campaign to counter the well-financed labor unions he believes have bullied previous governors and lawmakers into making bad decisions. He will seek to transform the state’s weak business lobby into a more formidable ally, believing that corporate leaders in New York have virtually surrendered the field to big labor.

Much of the article recites how Mr. Cuomo envisions working with or around the State Legislature.

While noting his reputation as “an expert practitioner of political hardball,” the Times reports he also intends to lavish attention on individual legislators, “…who he says are sick of being demonized and eager for accomplishment after years of gridlock and enmity.”

The Times also shares some of Mr. Cuomo’s thoughts on state funding would change under the budgets he he will propose:

New York, Mr. Cuomo argued, should move away from what he called the “block grant” model of spending, especially in areas like school aid, municipal aid and Medicaid. In each area, he said, he would cut projected spending but create pools of bonus money that can be won — by cities and villages, by school superintendents, by unions — in public competitions much like the federal Race to the Top education grant program.

An audio clip provides more of his own words on education funding.

Mr. Cuomo says,

There is going to be a reduction in reimbursement aid to your school district.  I’m sorry, there’s going to be.  I don’t have any money.  However, I’m going to cut your funding, pick a percent — 5 percent.  But, I will credit you back for any individual consolidations or recurring savings that you can produce.

You renegotiate a contract, you merge with a local school district, you merge bus companies, you merge student lunches, whatever, you show me a recurring savings, I will give you a bonus for the savings which can offset the cut.

If you say, ‘I have no idea,’ then you absorb the cut.  But I’m now going to introduce this idea of competition and there are going to be superintendents out there who are going to say, “Well, you know what, I have an idea.  We’re going to work with the neighboring school district, we’re going to do this, we’re going to renegotiate, we’re going to bring in our teachers’ union, our local,” fine.  These are going to be the school superintendents who get a bonus and this is very public now.

Race to the Top funds — New York was going to win or New York was going to lose.  “We can’t lose, we can’t lose.”  Why can’t we lose?  Well it would look bad for everbody and everybody knows we’re going to know that we lose.  Alright.  Well everybody’s gonna know that your school district didn’t win, and the other school districts actually did.

From past experience with these sorts of initiatives, I know that one of the design challenges is in assigning a reliable value to the local savings in advance.  If, instead, the savings is calculated after implementation, then the bonus would not contemporaneously help offset the cuts Mr. Cuomo anticipates, and the incentive impact is diminished.

On Mr. Paladino, the Times wrote,

But while [he] has attracted headlines for his blunt talk and what critics say are offensive statements on social issues, like his disgust over gay pride parades, he was most enthusiastic when talking about his plans to make government more efficient, sounding more like a small-business technocrat than a right-wing ideologue.

It also suggests some skepticism of his aptitude for political leadership,

Yet Mr. Paladino, who had never run for public office, also had difficulty explaining how he would push the radical change he seeks through the thicket of lobbyists and special interests that dominate Albany — or how he would convince the same Legislature he has spent months demonizing as riddled with crooks to help him.  At times during the interview, Mr. Paladino’s plans to tackle the state bureaucracy had an improvisational quality.

On education, Mr. Paladino said he would seek greater equity in funding for poor school districts, but ”was most passionate about how teachers’ contracts are negotiated.”  He offers some blunt comments about the imbalance of bargaining expertise between districts and unions.

Here is a document which recites what the two major party candidates have said about education and related fiscal issues on their websites – paladinoforthepeople.com and andrewcuomo.com.

Democrat Cuomo’s passages are excerpted from his 252-page “New NY Agenda” which can be downloaded here.

Republican Paladino’s items are pulled from the Issues section of his website.

Because Mr. Cuomo’s proposals are more extensive and more detailed, the summary below gives more space to his platform.

Property Tax Caps
Both candidates support a property tax cap on schools and local governments although Mr. Paladino argues that, “Capping taxes is gutless; cutting taxes takes courage.  I will cut taxes.”  He promises to cut state spending by 20 percent in his first year and to cut taxes by 10 percent.  He offers no details of how he would cap property taxes.

Mr. Cuomo proposes a cap limiting property tax increases by local governments and schools to the lesser of  2 percent or inflation, unless at least 60 percent of voters support a greater increase.  Exceptions to the cap would be permitted only for one-time expenses, such as large legal settlements and emergency construction.

Mandate Relief and Local Cost Control
Neither candidate offers enough specifics to give school leaders assurance that their districts could succeed under the tax caps and state budget austerity they both endorse.

Mr. Paladino’s website presents no proposals on this front.

Mr. Cuomo observes that since 2003-04, school aid has increased at more than twice the rate of inflation” and says that this rate cannot be sustained. (It should be noted that growth in School Aid has fallen sharply in the last two state budgets and aid was cut this year).

Attorney General Cuomo  contends, however, that,

“The state can cushion the impact of slowing the rate of growth in school aid by eliminating mandates that dramatically increase the cost of providing a quality education and encouraging smaller districts to achieve efficiencies through shared services and consolidation.”

The Democratic nominee promises to convene “…a group of educators, school management professionals, parents and others to evaluate the many mandate relief options already on the table.”

He specifically mentions seat-time requirements as a point of frustration for many educators.

He also promises a crack down on new unfunded mandates, a “sunset” on current unfunded mandates unless affirmatively renewed by legislation, and an annual report by the State Comptroller on the costs of new legislative and regulatory mandates.

Crafting his unfunded mandate sunset bill is not straightforward, as defining what is unfunded and what is a mandate are both somewhat in the eye of the beholder.

Mr. Cuomo notes, “One of the most important ways the state can help local governments reduce costs and maintain services within a strict property tax cap is by helping to reduce their health care costs.” He is on target with this concern.

In the last year of complete data available on the State Education Department’s website (2007-08), employee and retiree health insurance costs constituted an average of 10.2 percent of total school spending.  If 10 percent of a budget increases by 10 percent (not unusual for premium costs in either public or private sectors), total spending would rise by 1 percent even if all other costs could be frozen.

Specifically, Mr. Cuomo recommends:

• making it easier for schools and municipalities to create and join cooperative health plans, steps long supported by the Council and state School Boards Association;
• aggregating prescription drug purchases for Medicaid, state agencies, local governments, school districts and other parties to leverage bulk purchasing power; this proposal has been made by New York State United Teachers and endorsed by the Council; and
• “the state must do a much better job managing the New York State Health Insurance Program,” but does not explain what that might entail.

Superintendents commonly call for the adoption of one health insurance plan for all school employees statewide which would take the subject off local bargaining tables.  But the current NYSHIP is generally unattractive for upstate districts because higher downstate costs drive up statewide premiums.

The Democratic nominee calls the Tier V pension benefits enacted for new entrants into public retirement systems “a step in the right direction, but did not go far enough.”  He says the state must re-evaluate benefits and employee contributions, and should control late career pension padding.

Pensions costs were a major contributor to higher than historically typical property tax increases earlier in this decade.  But this passage in his “New NY Agenda” does not reveal whether Mr. Cuomo would propose changes that would significantly bring down costs.

One of Mr. Cuomo’s signature accomplishments as Attorney General was passage of a law to facilitate consolidation of local governments (see here for more on that initiative).

He continues to stress the need for consolidation and streamlining.  His new proposals focus on giving citizens and local leaders access to technical support to study potential mergers.

In both municipalities and schools, local leaders are often ahead of their voters in seeing the need for consolidation, a point glossed over by some advocates.  In both spheres, voters reject more consolidations or dissolutions than they approve.

The Candidates on Education Policy
Mr. Cuomo offers few ideas on how to improve the quality of education or how to close achievement gaps, beyond ensuring that the state win a Race to the Top grant, including raising the state’s charter school cap from 200 to 460 (his New NY Agenda was released in May).

He describes himself as “as strong supporter of charter schools.”

Mr. Paladino promises that his administration will extend the school year and the school day, and expand instruction in foreign languages, science and math, without indicating how this will be afforded under a local tax cap and 20 percent state spending reduction.

He also says he will consolidate school districts at a countywide level, an act which would require concurrence by both houses of the Legislature.

The Buffalo millionaire supports the expansion of charter schools for RTTT purposes and also calls for residential charter schools to “tackle problems created by dysfunctional homes.”  He also supports vouchers to assist parents in sending children to private schools, including parochial schools.

Mr. Paladino says that he will “rescind” the section 3020-a law faulted with inhibiting the ability of districts to discipline and remove bad teachers; this would require legislative approval.

He also says he will demand that the Board of Regents remove the board and superintendent of all districts with graduation rates below 60 percent or more than 25 percent of their schools in any form of distress and have them replaced with a “competent ’Special Master.”  This too would require legislation.

Finally, the Republican nominee says he will demand the resignation of all members of the State Board of Regents and will accept those “who think protecting union members is more important than not leaving any children behind.”  Governors have no authority over the Regents, who are elected by the Assembly and Senate.

There is an impulse to lament that the aspiring leaders of state government are giving little attention to the broad challenges of raising student achievement and closing achievement gaps.  But the Race to the Top initiative gives state and local education leaders plenty to take on, without a Governor tossing more ideas on to the agenda.

Cuomo on the State Budget and School Aid
Mr. Cuomo’s recommendations on the state budget are less dramatic and more detailed than those advanced by his principal opponent.

With collective bargaining agreements covering 96 percent of the state workforce expiring next spring, Mr. Cuomo calls for a one-year salary freeze for state employees.

The Democrat also proposes to freeze state taxes; this position includes opposing an extension of the temporary higher personal income tax rates for upper income New Yorkers, due to expire at the end of 2011.

The latter stance is pivotal.  The State Division of the Budget estimates that the higher PIT rates are contributing $5.7 billion in revenue to the current state budget, and that the state faces structural deficits of $8.2 billion next year and $13.5 billion in 2012-13.  Under these assumptions, if the state were to close next year’s gap through actions with recurring impact, the following year’s budget could be balanced simply by maintaining current income tax rates.

Mr. Cuomo also calls for capping state spending increases at the rate of inflation and permitting increases above the cap only with concurrence of two-thirds of both legislative chambers and the Governor.

One outcome of a state spending cap could be permanently depressed levels of state support for schools.  A more positive outcome would be if the cap moderated boom and bust cycles in state budgeting, with surpluses generated by the cap used to avert the need for deep aid cuts in down years.  Some school leaders would trade somewhat lower long-term aid levels for more year-to-year predictability.

The Attorney General would use two-thirds of emerging state budget surpluses expected once the spending cap is in place to fund new tax relief.  The remainder would go to build the state’s “rainy day” funds until they total 5 percent of state operating funds.

Under tax relief, he specifically stresses a “progressive property tax ‘circuitbreaker’ that provides relief to middle class homeowners whose property taxes are high relative to their incomes.”  The Council has long held that a circuitbreaker credit is the most efficient way to assure relief to taxpayers whose property tax levels are already too great.

One of the more thoughtfully provocative education items in either candidate’s platform is Mr. Cuomo’s section on School Aid (see page 49 in the New NY Agenda).

After noting the growth in School Aid since 2003-04, he says, “As part of reining in the growth of spending on education, the state must ensure that School Aid is targeted and fair.”  He says, “Districts with the greatest educational need and the least ability to locally fund education must not bear the full brunt of any School Aid cuts.”

He adds,

“Building Aid and other forms of ‘reimbursable’ aid must be scrutinized so that they do not distort a school district’s incentives to control costs.  We should first direct scarce dollars to basic educational program needs before allowing expense-based reimbursements for Building Aid and support functions to escalate in an uncontrollable way.”

He goes on to suggest that the availability of Building Aid encourages construction even when enrollment is declining, and other expense-based aids can discourage efficiencies or regional collaboration.

These premises are debatable.

Some expense-based aids may discourage efficiency, others encourage regional collaboration.

Sometimes Building Aid supports construction that is necessary even with enrollment declines, and may enable districts to undertake projects that would otherwise be deferred, averting greater taxpayer costs over the longer-term.

True effects can vary even within formulas, across districts.

But there is a larger point to be made.  Education groups have tended to oppose any and all changes to expense-based aids, especially those which would deny districts promised state reimbursement for costs they have already incurred in good faith.

While broken promises by the state will always be opposed, school groups need to weigh prospective changes to any aid category against other realistic options, recognizing the consequences of choices made and those not made.

For example, the Governor’s Budget Division projects that expense-based School Aid categories will increase by $550 million in 2012-13.

If the state could afford to deliver a $550 million total aid increase that year, would school leaders across the state choose to have it all come through the expense-based categories, foregoing any increase in Foundation Aid or some new operating aid formula?

“Waiting for Superman” is the latest effort from Davis Guggenheim, director of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the film about global climate change that helped Al Gore win both an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize.

New York Magazine has a preview that is worth reading for its insights into national education politics.

I’ll probably write more on this some day soon.

UPDATE:  Here is a comment on the movie from New York State United Teachers.

Over the weekend, Capital Region BOCES Superintendent Charles Dedrick had a column in the Albany Times Union arguing that a property tax cap could hurt the state’s neediest students because of their greater dependence on state aid.  In the event of a state aid cut or freeze, a uniform percentage limit on tax levy increases allows a poor district to raise less revenue than its more affluent peers forcing it to undergo greater spending austerity and widening gaps in resources.

Today the Times Union has a piece that is getting attention from education bloggers (this one included) for its conclusion that “Regents exams, once touted as a gold standard of evaluation, are so hard to fail they have become meaningless. are so hard to fail they have become meaningless.”

The conclusion might be valid – I’ve heard criticisms of the exams from superintendents – but the analysis is limited, omitting any discussion of how raw test scores are converted to final scores.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan made news for saying parents should have access to information on how well individual teachers do at raising their students’ test scores.

The Secretary’s comments came after the Los Angeles Times began a series using student test scores to estimate the value-added effectiveness of teachers in that city.  Later this month, the paper plans to publish an online database with ratings for more than 6,000 elementary school teachers.

The teacher union leader has called for a boycott of the paper and education scholar Diane Ravitch called the reporting disgraceful.

While parents could benefit from the information, I question the value-added by the paper’s decision to make individual teacher data available for anyone to see.  It seems likely to divert real understanding of teacher performance into quick glimpses at how individual teachers measure up.

Often controversial Washington, D.C. superintendent Michelle Rhee aid she would also consider making value-added scores public.  But she added, “It would have to be managed in the right way and … given the right context.”  She warned that releasing the data could confuse parents and create logistical problems for administrators who could be swamped with demands from parents for higher-rated teachers.

Last week New York State United Teachers announced it was deferring a decision on whether to make an endorsement in this years race for Governor.

NYSUT President Richard Iannuzi said,“Andrew Cuomo has historically been a supporter of education funding and organized labor while advancing a strong social justice agenda.  Lately, his positions on property tax caps and statements about public employees have raised a lot of concerns among NYSUT members. We want to hear more and learn more before deciding whether to take a position in the governor’s race.”

NYSUT and the Civil Service Employees Association remained neutral in the statewide AFL-CIO’s endorsement vote, allowing Mr. Cuomo to gain the two-thirds vote necessary to earn that endorsement.

NYSUT also did not make endorsements in about half the State Senate elections.

Tomorrow’s special legislative session will be an all but certain flop because nervous Democrats, eyeing last Tuesday’s suburban voter revolt, are refusing to back Gov. Paterson’s plan to slash school and health-care spending.

He continues,

“If Paterson had a chance of getting the cuts he wanted, that chance ended last Tuesday,” said a prominent Senate Democrat, adding that there is now “widespread fear of defeat next year” among many Democrats in the wake of the stunning election results.

And adds,

“If any of our ‘marginals’ voted for those school cuts they would be dead next November,” said the Senate Democrat, referring to a half-dozen “marginal” Democrats, including two on Long Island, who have been targeted for defeat by Republicans.

Mr. Dicker also reports that support for the cuts in State Assembly may not be as solid as previously suggested:

While Assembly Democrats, unlike their Senate counterparts, have been publicly supportive of Paterson’s efforts, they privately tell a different story.

Insiders said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) is “unwilling” to go along with the size, scope and distribution of Paterson’s proposed school-aid and health-care cuts because he considers them to be too sweeping and out of fear of their impact on suburban Democrats.

For more on the implications of the election see my weekend post, “Election tea leaves.”

But an under-analyzed aspect of the election is that Democratic losses in many regions resulted from a steep fall-off in their voter turnout, not a surge in GOP votes.

Gannett News writes,

“Voters on Tuesday picked Republican challengers in many county races across the state, a sign of widespread displeasure with high taxes in the suburbs and an anti-incumbent backlash, political leaders and experts said.”

…The Democrats’ losses were profound in the Hudson Valley and on Long Island, two of the most highly taxed places in the country. Republicans won the county executive seat in Westchester County and control of the legislatures in Dutchess, Ulster and Nassau counties.

Republicans also made gains in Erie and Monroe Counties.

Further, Nassau County Executive Executive Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, faced an unexpectedly strong challenge and may yet lose in his re-election bid.  After election night, he led by only 237 votes, with over 10,000 absentee and other paper ballots to be counted.

Republican candidates were not universally successful, however.

Democrats won the race drawing the most national attention of all thosein New York, a special election to fill the vacant Congressional seat covering the northern tier of the state.  Democrat Bill Owens defeated Conservative Douglas Hoffman after Republican Dede Scozzafava dropped out and endorsed Owens.  Republicans had held the seat for more than a century.

Also, running as a Republican/Independent, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg won a third term, but his victory margin (51%-46%) was about one-third of what pre-election polls suggested it could be.

Democratic political consultant Bruce Gyory told Gannett, “This wasn’t a partisan wave. This was a non-partisan, anti-incumbent riptide that hit everywhere.”

Several commentators are interpreting the results as a long awaited voter uprising against property taxes.  New York Times columnist Peter Applebome, wrote, “If ever an Election Day had a clear theme in the cities and suburbs outside New York it was this one: property taxes.”

He added,

Contemplating the election landscape and the region’s high property tax burden a month ago, Richard Nathan, who was retiring as co-director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York at Albany mused: “When is this dog going to bark? And the numbers make you think it’s going to be soon.”

Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi said, “If I lose this race, it should wake people up to the reality that Albany should change the way it addresses property taxes. We have to do something about the school taxes, and if I have to be defeated in order for that to happen, then at least . . . people will recognize that something has to be done.”

One of my clearest remaining memories from graduate school is a professor’s observation that, “Reality is what goes on between our ears.”

Whatever the reality behind Tuesday’s election outcomes, a hardening perception that Democrats are at risk and that a property tax revolt is gathering steam will alter legislative decision-making dynamics.  Over the near-term, it might raise resistance to mid-year School Aid cuts.  Over the longer-term, it could result in more action on property tax relief, for good or ill.

There is another way to examine the election outcomes, however — ask what caused the sharp fall-off in Democratic votes in several regions?  For example, the shift in Democratic fortunes in the two downstate county executive races did not result from a surge in Republican votes.

In Nassau, Democrat Suozzi saw his vote total drop by 35 percent, while the defeated Democratic incumbent in Westchester saw his turnout fall even more — by 39 percent.  Monroe County Democrats also reported disappointment with turnout.

Why did Democratic voters stay home?  Did candidates they supported in the past fail to campaign on themes that resonate with their concerns?  Is support for education one of those themes?

As the administration promised, the text of the speech was posted on the White House website a day early.  You can read it here.

More on on the speech and the controversy…

The conservative Fox News noted,

The debate over Obama’s speech Tuesday has dominated cable television and talk radio for several days, signaling again the stark divisions in the country both over politics and social issues.

But Obama avoids any partisan shots in his prepared remarks and instead encourages students to set goals for their education and to maintain focus in the face of life’s challenges.

For example, Mr. Obama says,

At the end of the day, the circumstances of your life — what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home — that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Mr. Obama’s Education SecretaryArne Duncan noted that proposed lesson plans to accompany the speech had been revised to address criticisms.  But he rejected claims that the speech is an attempt to “indoctrinate” students in a political agenda.  He said,”That’s just silly. They can go to school. They can not watch. It’s just, you know, going an 18-minute speech.  He added that Mr. Obama would stress, “personal responsibility and challenging students to take their education very, very seriously.”

Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee), Education Secretary under President George H.W. Bush, said he understood some of the concern, then added

But of course the president of the United States should be able to address students. And of course, parents and teachers should decide in what context.  If I were a teacher, I’d take advantage of it, and I’d put up Lincoln and Eisenhower and Reagan and teach about the presidency, and then I’d put up the head of North Korea and say, In that country, you go to jail if you criticize the president. In our country, you have a constitutional right to do it.

The first President Bush delivered a nationwide address to schoolchildren, as did President Reagan.