Education

Cuomo: Common Core overhaul starts now with new standards

Andrew Cuomo New York State Governor

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday a plan to overhaul the state’s Common Core system by adopting new, locally-designed standards along with less testing.

The governor’s Common Core Task Force unveiled the plan in its final report and based its recommendations on feedback from more than 2,100 educators, parents and students across the state, according to a press release issued by the governor’s office.

“The Common Core was supposed to ensure all of our children had the education they needed to be college and career-ready — but it actually caused confusion and anxiety,” Mr. Cuomo said. “That ends now. Today, we will begin to transform our system into one that empowers parents, teachers and local districts and ensures high standards for all students.”

[Click here to view the complete report]

No new legislation is required to implement the recommendations in the report and Common Core aligned assessments will not count for students or teachers until the start of 2019-20 school year in order to “avoid the errors caused by the prior flawed implementation,” the release states.

The report includes 21 recommendations, including:

· Adopting locally-driven state education standards with input from local districts, educators, and parents, as well as allow educators flexibility for Students with Disabilities and English Language Learners.

· Establishing a transparent and open process by which New York standards are periodically reviewed by educators and content area experts.

· Providing educators and local school districts with the flexibility to develop and tailor curriculum to meet the needs of their individual students and requiring the state to create and release new and improved curriculum resources that educators can then adapt to meet the needs of their individual students.

· Engaging New York educators — not a private corporation — to drive the review and creation of State standards-aligned tests in an open and transparent manner.

· Minimizing student testing anxiety by reducing the number of test days and test questions and providing ongoing test transparency to parents, teachers and districts on test questions and student test scores.

· Ensuring that State tests account for different types of learners, including Students with Disabilities and English Language Learners.

Thursday’s announcement comes a week after Congressman Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) said the House of Representatives had passed his “Zeldin Amendment” that aims to make sure school districts that decide to drop the standards won’t be punished by a cut in federal funds. That bill is expected to be sent to President Barack Obama.

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