CHENANGO COUNTY – Of the many thorns adorning local communities in recent months, the implementation of the Common Core that was rolled out to students and teachers alike last year still remains a major point of contention among parents and educators.
New York lawmakers are now stepping in to slow the pace of the state mandated and federally-incentivized curricula, which wields an agenda of increasing the overall U.S. educational rankings versus international counterparts.
The announcement released by the State Education Department this week was met with mixed skepticism, politically speaking, as legislative leaders urged state officials to delay the use of Common Core-aligned tests for two years though a moratorium.
On Tuesday, the State Board of Regents P-12 Education and Higher Education adopted several measures presented in a report from a Regents’ work group to adjust implementation of Common Core standards.
Under the recent changes, the requirement to pass Common Core-based Regents exams at the college and career ready level will be extended. The class of 2022 – today’s 4th graders – will be the first to face the new higher graduation requirements.
In a statement from New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo's office earlier this week, Cuomo said the recommended changes are “another in a series of missteps by the Board of Regents that suggests the time has come to seriously reexamine its capacity and performance. These recommendations are simply too little, too late for our parents and students.”
In the same breath, Cuomo sided with proponents of the Common Core while admitting that the roll-out was flawed from the ground up.
“The Common Core is the right goal and direction as it is vital that we have a real set of standards for our students and a meaningful teacher evaluation system. However, Common Core’s implementation in New York has been flawed and mismanaged from the start,” he said.
While Cuomo has acknowledged problems with the Common Core rollout, he urged that a moratorium would be premature, and that his appointed panel of lawmakers and education experts would find and fix flaws by the end of the legislative session.
"I have created a commission to thoroughly examine how we can address these issues. The commission has started its work and we should await their recommendations so that we can find a legislative solution this session to solve these problems,” stated Cuomo in a press release.
Both teachers and parents of students have argued the fairness of New York State to begin using new standardized tests in haste – before teachers and students received new curricula and adequate training – partly because teacher evaluations are based upon on how students score on state exams.
Last year, only approximately 30 percent of the state's students in grades 4-8 were proficient on their new math and reading tests, according to statistics obtained from the nysed.gov websites' Information and Reporting Service database.
“I think a moratorium is a step in the right direction, but I'm not sure how much it will help at this point,” said Rachel Lake, mother of a fourth grade student in Norwich. “Our educators need enhanced training and I feel that it should have started out with the younger K-5 students; It shouldn't have been pushed through so fast.”
Lake added, “While I agree that the education system needed an overhaul, I believe that some of the concepts and modules that are given to students through the Common Core curriculum are out of touch with what some students can comprehend.”
In a press release issued by New York State Senator Libous regarding the dialing-down, Libous said, “I've spent months listening to parents, teachers and administrators discuss the new Common Core standards, and a lot of the feedback I’ve received is negative.” He went on, “We all want to give students the tools they need to learn and compete. That’s the whole point: to improve the education of our young people across the state. Unfortunately, the State Education Department has had some difficulties rolling out the new standards. Parents feel like they’ve been left out of the conversation while their kids are struggling. For these reasons, my Senate colleagues and I have asked the Board of Regents, who oversees the Department of Education, to delay use of the Common Core Tests for at least two years.”
In addition to the implementation of the new standards, Senator Libous also suggested that delaying the use of the new Education Data Portal – an online database that accompanies Common Core – should also be delayed for at least a year, citing that “Privacy experts have raised decent questions about defects in the Portal allowing unauthorized access to personally-identifiable data – we can't be too careful.”
“The results are high-stakes; we need to make sure teachers, parents and students are well-equipped for the new curriculum and the new testing. Everyone must have a fair chance to prepare for Common Core,” Libous added.