The United States ranking on international testing of high school students dropped in 2010. New York State recently won a $700 million Race to the Top grant which required school systems to include a significant percent of teacher evaluation on their student test scores. Governor Andrew Cuomo has threatened to withhold state aid from districts that do not reach agreements on a teacher evaluation process. Comments by school personnel in Westchester highlight why teacher evaluation is such an elusive goal. Teacher unions are opposed. Administrators have been quoted in the press as saying the money they are allotted to receive will be insufficient to allow the schools to reach the required standards.To illustrate, in Westchester and Rockland 31 districts will get less than $50,000 and 8 will get nothing. School board members lament they will have to deal with collective bargaining issues. In the meantime President Barack Obama has given l0 states (not New York) a waiver from the No Child Left Behind's demanding requirements.

Gary Stern has a good primer on how local school districts are dealing with Cuomo's tax levy cap: School districts struggle to explain tax cap.

The first thing that school districts want their communities to understand about the state’s new tax cap is that it isn’t really a tax cap. What it does is limit how much a district’s tax levy can go up. That’s the total amount a district raises in taxes. But the cap does not limit how much property-tax bills — what you pay — may go up.

Exempt from the tax-levy cap are expenses such as pension costs and voter-approved capital costs.

The Iona Gaels are playing University of Nevade-Reno live on ESPN2 as part of the ESPN Bracket Busters Games.

The game is being broadcast from the Hynes Center at Iona College in New Rochelle.

UPDATE: I went over there to watch the second half live. It was packed. I noticed all the coaches were wearing bow ties and I was like "what is up with the bow ties?" When I got back I saw a tweet from ICGaels which explained the whole bow tie thing. Hint, it's about prostate cancer.

New Rochelle, NY (February 15, 2012) For the fourth-consecutive year, the Iona College Mock Trial (ICMT) team has successfully qualified for a bid to the national championship. This past weekend, ICMT competed in the regional-qualifying tournament at Yale University and became one of the top eight teams in the 30 team regional field to receive bids to the opening rounds of the national championship to be held in Minnesota. Competition included teams from Columbia University, Brown University, Princeton University and Yale University, to name a few.

New Rochelle, NY, January 2012 – Judith Huntington, President of The College of New Rochelle, has been elected to the Board of Directors of The Westchester County Association, the highly regarded business membership organization in Westchester County.

“I am honored to have been elected to serve on the Board of Directors of such a distinguished business organization. With its strong commitment to advocacy and economic vitality, The Westchester County Association plays a vital role in addressing the critical issues facing Westchester’s business community,” said Ms. Huntington. In 2008, she received the Apex Advocacy Award from The Westchester County Association for her participation on the County Association’s Property Tax Alliance.

College of New Rochelle guard Alyssa Pechin has been selected as the HVWAC Basketball Player of the Week for the second time this season. The freshman from Yonkers, NY, who is also a four-time Rookie of the Week selection, scored a conference-high 41 points and also dished out eight assists and swiped five steals, leading the Blue Angels to a conference win over Yeshiva. For the Week, Pechin averaged 23.6 points, 4.0 assists, 3.7 steals and 3.2 rebounds and currently leads the conference in scoring (18.5 points/gm).

New Rochelle, NY- The College of New Rochelle women's basketball team's dominance in the second half led the Blue Angels to a 70-39 victory over Yeshiva University in the quarterfinals of the HVWAC Championship. The Blue Angels held Yeshiva to 31% from the field and rolled offensively with four players scoring in the double digits.

CNR struggled in the first half as they were outrebounded by 11 and held to 13 of 42 shooting. The Blue Angels still were able to go into half time with a 26-24 lead, as Freshman Alyssa Pechin scored 13 points on 6-10 shooting and dished out 5 assist in the first half. The second half was all CNR as Yeshiva had no answer for the full court press and turned the ball over 23 times. CNR was able to take advantage of Yeshiva's mistakes and start the half on a 12-2 run and take control of the game. Yeshiva was never able to recover and lost 70-39.