The Joke’s on New York

Fool me once, they say, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. So what do they say when a pol plays the game nearly every single year he’s in office? That’s what Gov. Cuomo’s been trying to do regarding teacher evaluations. His latest deception: He wants to revamp New York’s Common Core program; a panel will do a “comprehensive review” and suggest changes leading to a new law.

The program, you see, is “deeply flawed.” The public lacks faith in it: One of every five kids opted not to take the state tests.

Please. Does anyone actually believe that lame excuse? No, city teachersunion boss Mike Mulgrew last year admitted the real reason for the constant doovers and delays: to “gum up the works” — and prevent schools from purging lousy teachers.

Consider: The optout movement was driven by teachers unions out to discredit the tests — because the unions fear the scores will be used to hold their members accountable.

Cuomo pretends that’s not so: “Experts,” he says, question Common Core’s “intelligence.” Yet the gov had an excuse last year, too: Common Core was rolled out too quickly, he claimed, with a botched implementation. So the state would wait two more years before scores could be used to hold teachers to task.

This year, Cuomo pushed through yet another “fix” to the evaluation system, which is supposed to use the scores. Then the state offered school districts a chance to delay for even more years.

See the pattern? It dates back to 2010, when the feds bribed New York to link teacher evaluations to student test scores.

In 2011, Cuomo said (rightly) that the first scheme to actually do the linking was “unworkable by design”: It wound up rating almost every teacher as “effective” or “highly effective,” even though a majority of students were flunking the tests.

So the next year, he rolled out a “groundbreaking” plan to “make New York a national leader in holding teachers accountable.” Ha! Students kept on flunking — while teachers kept on passing.

Then came the “fix” in 2014, and another this year. Every time, the governor’s folks insist the new system will finally force the firing of incompetent teachers — yet nothing ever changes.

And now Cuomo plans another overhaul. Who’s he kidding?

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: The unions and the politicians they control will make sure no system ever lets schools shed rotten teachers.

The only hope for kids is to flee these failure factories — to flee to charters or private schools, or out of New York altogether.