THE NEWS SAYS:

Cuomo must use his power on schools.

The coming week will determine whether Gov. Cuomo will keep his vow to overhaul public schools and clean up Albany. He included ethics and education reforms in his budget proposal, declaring them to be do-or-die propositions. The Legislature would agree to measures such as near-total disclosure of outside income or face a state government shutdown.

The Legislature would approve a rigorous system for evaluating teachers, with a much-streamlined process for firing lemons, or school districts would be denied a bonanza of state funding.

Cuomo must hold firm and deliver. But there are worrying signs that he’s wavering as the March 31 budget deadline approaches.

On Monday, the governor threw overboard other key elements in his spending plan, including extending mayoral control of schools, lifting a cap on charter schools, offering college tuition aid to undocumented immigrants who arrived as children and creating a tax credit for contributions in support of public and private schools.

Help for the immigrants is probably dead for the year, along with the tax credit. Sorry again to Timothy Cardinal Dolan. Extending mayoral control and lifting the charter cap have better shots in postbudget legislative sessions.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos suggested that a crucial piece of Cuomo’s education overhaul — strengthening the rules of teacher evaluation — could be shunted to some kind of commission. The rules would be certainly delayed and in all likelihood watered down.

Remember that Cuomo vowed nothing less than to bust the education “monopoly” over the opposition of the teachers union.

Remember that he ridiculed the current teacher-rating system as “baloney” — and rightly so, in that it grades virtually all teachers as “effective” or “highly effective” even as two-thirds of students fall short of the minimum standards on math and English tests.

Remember that he vowed to make it harder for teachers to win tenure, backed merit pay for the classroom stars and called for state-managed shutdowns of persistently failing schools.

Remember that Cuomo pledged to finally force lawmakers to reveal who’s paying them for what.

The state Constitution gives the governor enormous power over the Legislature in shaping a budget. Cuomo must use it.