Schools

Common Core Under Fire from State Lawmakers

Leaders of the New York Assembly and Senate said they would push the state Board of Regents for a moratorium on the tests connected to the Common Core standards, for measuring both student and teacher performance, according to capitalnewyork.com.

State Senator Jeff Klein (D-Westchester, Bronx), one of the Senate's co-leaders, issued a statement with co-leader Dean Skelos  and Senate Education Committee chair John Flanagan.

“We continue to support the goals of an improved education curriculum that increases standards and ensures that students are college and career ready,” the statement said. 

Common Core and the state's whole school-improvement initiative, called EngageNY, has come in for increasingly loud and angry criticism from parents, educators and lawmakers since its adoption by the state Education Department. They complained that SED set the pass scores too high right away on tests of material students had barely been introduced to, that children were being needlessly stressed by incessant testing and that teachers were being unfairly rated by the flawed test system.

Harry Phillips, who represents the lower Hudson Valley on the Board of Regents, said he thought the board and state education officials had been "tone-deaf" in the implementation. 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office responded to the lawmakers' statements with a press release from Communications Director Melissa DeRosa.

"The Governor believes that we need to set real standards for our students and have a meaningful teacher evaluation system, and continues to support the Common Core agenda.," she said in the statement. 

"However, the Governor believes that the way that Common Core has been managed by the Board of Regents is flawed, leading to too much uncertainty, confusion and anxiety among students and their parents. The strength of public education in New York is dependent on a rational system that is well administered.

"Two weeks ago, the Governor announced that he will assemble a panel that includes education experts and members of the legislature to identify flaws in Common Core’s rollout and take corrective action by the end of this session. The Governor believes there are two issues – common core and teacher evaluations – and they must be analyzed separately. It would be premature to consider any moratorium before the panel is allowed to do its work." 








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