Opinion

The New York State Legislature recently met in joint session to elect four members to the state Board of Regents. The Board of Regents is responsible for the general supervision of all educational activities in the state, including implementation of educational standards such as the much-maligned Common Core standards. The board consists of 17 members, […]

Don’t you love elections? In the campaigns for the important ones, we get to see frantic tap dancing. We get to see some foaming at the mouth. This year’s campaigns promise to entertain. In New York, we already see our Governor Andrew Cuomo moving to the right. He knows he has most Democrats’ votes in

Editor’s note: The authors say they wrote this letter in response to the editorial by Norman Poltenson, entitled, “Pre-K is a failure, so let’s make it universal” in the Jan. 31 issue of The Central New York Business Journal. There is overwhelming, research-based evidence that early education creates critical opportunities, especially for at-risk children living

Just over three years have passed since Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed Public Act 10 (PA 10), a major labor-reform bill. Organized labor, legislative Democrats, and their supporters claimed Walker was destroying collective-bargaining rights for government employees and responded by occupying the state capitol in Madison. Thousands of protesters assembled to chant, “This is what

Friday’s monthly nonfarm payrolls report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provided fresh evidence of a bounce back in the U.S. labor market from recent weakness that may have been weather-related. This is despite the unemployment rate’s rise to 6.7 percent in February from 6.6 percent in January. For the record, employers added

The new mayor of the Big Apple, Bill de Blasio, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are duking it out. The mayor wants to slap his city’s millionaires with extra taxes — to fund the pre-K program the teachers’ unions want. (Note: pre-K is not for the kiddies. It is for more jobs for dues-paying

The New York State Board of Regents approved changes to Common Core recently, including delaying full implementation of the graduation requirements by five years — from 2017 to 2022. This means that instead of ninth graders being the first class to graduate with a Regents degree aligned with Common Core standards, it will now be

How many times have you heard people wish we had high-speed trains? Like those in Europe. Imagine Buffalo to the Big Apple in less than two hours, at 200 mph. That is not far off the average speed of the fastest Japanese and European trains. Imagine zipping between cities: Utica to NYC in an hour

Our Democratic officials are all reading from the same hymnal. Another State of the Union address; another call for the federal funding of universal pre-kindergarten. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has chimed in with his call for phasing in pre-k. The mayor of Syracuse has added her voice, and the Big Apple’s new mayor rode