Most of the noise against the shoddy implementation of Common Core in New York has been heard in Long Island, but parents and educators are even angrier in the Lower Hudson Valley than in New York. Here is an excellent explanation by veteran journalist Gary Stern..

This is one of the best analyses I have read about why state officials and the public are on a collision course. Can the Regents continue to push such a wildly unpopular set of policies? How long can they continue to say they they are right and the public is wrong?

Stern writes, for example:

The big picture

The State: New York’s public schools have done a poor job of educating its students. Large numbers of students have received high school diplomas despite being unprepared for college or the workforce. They have poor writing skills, do not grasp key math concepts, and are not adept at problem-solving or working in teams. Minorities in big city school systems have been most poorly served, but even suburban schools are not where they need to be. Educational standards need to be not only higher but transformed to reflect the high-tech, constantly changing needs of industry and to keep our state and nation competitive. Get on board or get out of the way.

The LoHud: A state-imposed, one-size-fits-all approach to reform is naïve and counter-productive. Many suburban school systems do a fine job, pushing their students to excel while leaving room for creativity, individualism and local emphasis on the arts. Here’s the thing: parents and local school officials always have a better sense of their schools’ strengths and weaknesses than state and federal bureaucrats trying to adapt business models to education. The state’s approach to reform is foolish and losing credibility by the day. Get out of our backyards.

The Common Core learning standards

The State: The Common Core standards are smarter, more up-to-the-moment and, yes, tougher than our former educational goals. They present a coherent, rich framework for what students need to know and how students need to be able to think. School districts can still devise their own curricula, lesson plans and creative local programming – as long as students meet the standards. Yes, the transition to the Common Core is difficult and challenging but cannot wait. Today’s students deserve the best possible education this year and next year, not when schools feel they are comfortable with the Core.

The LoHud: The standards are pretty good, better in some areas than others. We need time to review them. However, any good will that the Common Core might have inspired is being lost because its implementation in New York has been irresponsibly rushed. We’re building the plane in mid-flight. The standards for each grade assume that students have grown up with the Common Core, but they haven’t. Teachers and curriculum leaders are grasping to figure out what the state wants instead of doing their jobs. The roll-out needs to be halted for a couple of years so we can figure out what comes next. Stop the madness.

Testing

The State: A limited amount of standardized testing is a necessary way to see if students are progressing. The results can be used as a tool to improve instruction. Our new tests are tougher but also better. We had to put them in place right away to ensure districts would align themselves to the Common Core. Without the new tests, the change would have been too slow. We need to find ways to reduce overall testing, in part by encouraging districts to use other methods for their teacher evaluations. And, yes, we will keep moving toward on-line testing until we’re ready.

The LoHud: Are you kidding? You want us to reduce testing? We set up new pre- and post-tests because we had to rush our teacher evaluations systems into place. The new 3-8 tests set us up for failure to prove your contentions that the schools are failing. Your cut scores are non-sense (which the state quietly acknowledges by not requiring remediation for all students who failed to hit state targets). Now you won’t let us see the tests, meaning that we can’t learn what our students need. And now the state is introducing new high school tests? Here we go again. Oh, by the way, we have a million questions that have to be answered before we’re ready for on-line tests.