Mario Cuomo on Education Former Democratic Governor of New York

Public schools inculcate a disbelief in God

Smaller classes, more teachers & class time & resources

The kind of commitment our public schools need requires that we work toward four goals:
• Smaller classes. Compared to their counterparts at private institutions, teachers in our public schools are asked to handle up to twice as many students at a time.
• The best possible teachers. [We need] intelligent ideas that would make it less cumbersome for new teachers to get certified and would expose existing staff to rigorous ongoing training and evaluation.
• A longer school day and school year. While the US breezes along with a 19th-century 180-day school calendar designed to free up the kids in the summer to work on the family farm, the Germans send their children to school for 220 days, the Japanese for 240.
• Decent school facilities. American public education is really composed of two systems-an excellent one that serves the children of the already comfortable and a wretched one that barely serves the rest. [We need especially to repair] our schools’ physical facilities.