The Journal News of the Lower Hudson Valley in New York, referred to as Lohud, has been critical of the mess that Andrew Cuomo has made with his constant meddling in education policy.
Today, Lohud praised Cuomo’s task force for listening to the parents who opted their children out of the Common Core testing. The number of children who opted out were about 225,000. That is a huge number of people expressing no-confidence in the state’s testing regime.
Lohud thinks the task force listened to parents and educators and hit all the right notes:
The task force released a report Thursday that accurately and even passionately captures the confusion and disarray unleashed on schools by Albany over the last several years. Consider this slap at New York’s educational leadership, which sounds like it came from a group of outside critics:
“The implementation of the Common Core in New York was rushed and flawed. Teachers stepped into their classrooms in the 2012-2013 school year unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the new standards, without curriculum resources to teach students, and forced to administer new high-stakes standardized tests that were designed by a corporation instead of educators.”
Hey, that’s what happened.
We messed up
Without naming names, the report is a pretty stunning rebuke of Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and former state Education Commissioner John King (soon to become acting U.S. education secretary), who refused to heed the legitimate and plentiful concerns of educators and parents. As a result, New York will wind up spending more than a decade rewriting education policies over and over, without any guarantee that students will be better off in the end….
Interestingly, the report does not explore the merits and failings of New York’s teacher-evaluation system, which is perhaps most controversial for grading teachers, in part, on student test scores. Instead, the task force recommends that test scores not be used to evaluate teachers or students until 2019-2020. (State law already bans including the test scores on student transcripts or using them to make student placement decisions through 2018.)
This rather vague recommendation leaves the teacher-evaluation system in place, and would likely require school districts to replace test scores with another measure for the next several years.
The task force did not take the next, necessary step of declaring the evaluation system a failure and calling for the development of a new system that would not only hold teachers accountable but give them the information they need to improve their performance and student achievement. But the panel covered a lot of ground in a few short weeks, and it should not be up its 16 people to solve all of New York’s problems.
Should Cuomo and the state Legislature move ahead with the development of new standards and testing, a new evaluation system would have to be next. Otherwise, the education wars will continue.
There’s no telling, at this point, whether Cuomo will endorse the task force’s work in whole or part or whether the recommendations would be carried out in such a way as to win back the loyalty of disenchanted parents and educators. We’ll likely find out where the governor stands when he delivers his State of the State address next month.
Unless the Legislature repeals or amends the law that was passed last June and tucked into the state budget, teachers will still be evaluated by test scores, counting for up to 50%, then local measures will not replace what the law requires. Their evaluations won’t lead to punishments, but presumably they will go onto their permanent records. Thus, for the task force’s recommendations to have any teeth, the Legislature must act to change the objectionable law. The task force’s recommendations do not trump state law.
Lohud credits the parents for forcing the task force to listen. Now, let’s see what Governor Cuomo does. It would be nice if he walked back his statement that he hopes to bust the “public education monopoly,” which he said right before he was re-elected. That would be a good start, especially for the parents of more than 90% of the children in the state who attend public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As a veteran elementary teacher in the LoHud readership area, I would be VERY leery of anything that sounds like a “win” regarding Albany’s news.
Until there are real and substantial changes that directly impact students and teachers IN THE CLASSROOM this is all just smoke and mirrors.
New York Parents: PLEASE don’t be placated by the recent news. Stay vigilant. Ask questions. Get involved. Wonder aloud to whomever will listen.
There are still going to be two weeks worth of tests in the Spring. That is not changing. Math tests will still be given nearly two months before the end of the school year, based on the developmentally inappropriate Common Core Standards. Test prep is still a predominant focus of “instruction” in many districts. Test scores are still being used to categorize kids and teachers. And Common Core Standards are still “driving” instruction.
NOTHING has changed yet. Until the change is real and in place, and impacting what we do and what the kids are asked to do, the talk is just talk.
PLEASE don’t be lulled into complacency. And spread the word.
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The governor hopes he can appease the active Opt out parents. Until there are some authentic tangible changes, parents and teachers should proceed to shelter students from unnecessary, standardized testing.
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Here here Alice & retired teacher- my hope is that parents are not lulled into a sense of victory – refuse 2016!
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I second that emotion
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“The implementation of the Common Core in New York was rushed and flawed.”
“Execution”
Iraq and school reform
Are really a success
It’s simply execution
That makes them seem a mess
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Cuomo Jr. will probably not listen, or if he does, he will cherry pick what he wants and/or modify what he sees. He will do this per Elia, with whom he has obviously met behind closed doors.
I am not holding my breath. Political careers will have to be ruined in order for politicians to really listen to the will of the masses and act upon it non-negotiably . . . .
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“Self Reflection”
One way mirror
Little help
For finding error
In oneself
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Cuomo
has nothing
in his duomo
just an empty space
indifferent to
class and race
his will to win
the D.C. executive branch
So hateful is he,
It would be nice
to push him into
a pot of salted water
to blanch . . .
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The implementation of CC was not rushed.
I am sorry, but if the teachers and schools have not prepared for the implementation of Common Core it is their own doing! They knew this was coming. It did not get forced upon schools overnight! They have had since 2010 to learn about the standards and to prepare accordingly for its implementation!
I am a parent and I have seen firsthand that there is a tremendous issue with grade level skill sets (in both English Language Arts (Reading & Writing) as well as Math) being met in the classrooms.
For many schools, the issues reside in the fact that there is a significant literacy issue with too many students. It was demonstrated by the failure to meet the No Child Left Behind standard of all but the most disabled children reading & writing at grade level, yet nobody changed their practices to ensure that students were actually reading and writing at grade level! Instead of the schools and teachers providing more intensive remedial instruction that was research based, they instead continued to pass students through and lowered the bar by modifying down the curriculum materials in the classrooms.
And when parents try to get effective remedial instruction for their children, instead of being welcomed into the “team” as an active participant willing to support and assist their child(ren) (and hence their teacher(s)), they are too many times shut out by the “team” instead of embraced.
There is an evidenced based methodology to successfully teach reading and writing that has been researched and implemented and known to work with both general education students as well as students that struggle with learning to read. By using a systematic approach, especially proven methodologies based upon the Orton Gillingham (OG) approach, which is language-based, multi-sensory, structured, sequential, cumulative, cognitive and flexible. But instead, too many schools and teachers still continue to use a “whole word/whole language” approach to teaching reading to students. But for how many more decades are we going to let our children struggle year after year and graduate students with a high school diploma in hand, that are functionally illiterate (give or take?)
It is not to say that a “whole word/whole language”approach can not be a supplement to the reading curriculum, but it obviously has failed to be successful for a majority of students that have and will continue to struggle to learn how to read and write effectively at grade level if the “whole word/whole language” approach is used alone or too early in a student’s reading program. Once the student has mastered the OG methodology, that might be the better time to then bring in some “whole word/whole language” approach methods, as a supplement. But not before the students are working fluently and closer to grade level.
It is these students, that are falling through the cracks of the traditional school paradigms, using non-effective methods to teach reading, writing (as well as math) skills, which I believe the Chancellor is talking about.
And unfortunately, the shortfalls ironically start with the colleges themselves in some respects. It is the colleges that are turning out these teachers that have not been given the needed foundation or true educational background or training to prepare them to fluently teach the english language to students (both native and second language learners.) How many K-6/12 teachers have had any in depth courses on the history of the english language and it’s nuances? It is a language that is very interesting and not really not all that inconsistent. [Louisa Moats (1995) pointed out that at least 20 sounds in the English language have spellings that are more than 90% predictable, and Pinker noted that “for about eighty-four percent of English words, spelling is completely predictable from regular rules” (1994, p. 190). So the goal for teachers is to teach the very common letter-sound patterns and the history of as many irregular words as possible. When teachers and students understand the consistent patterns of written English, as well as the historical basis of words, they can better understand the regularities and the relatively few irregularities in English words (Henry, 2010); Moats and other researchers have come to the convergent conclusion that most teachers are ill prepared to explicitly teach reading and writing as demonstrated by a lack of knowledge concerning the phonology and orthography of the English language. Conversely, teachers who have a strong knowledge of phonology and orthography as well as the ability to apply these concepts have students who have higher levels of literacy achievement (Cunningham, et. al., 2004; Spear-Swerling, 2004). This especially applies to teachers who are teaching in the primary grades where literacy acquisition is critical.]
When taught using methods and approaches that are multi-sensory, structured, sequential, cumulative, cognitive and flexible, children flourish and it changes their trajectory from a struggling and very needy student, to a student that is able to keep up with their peers and realize their potential. But instead of using a proven approach based upon Orton Gillingham, which has demonstrated over decades its success, based upon the research going back to early in the last century, that has been repeatedly shown to help all but a very few students with true language based learning deficits, schools and teachers have refused to embrace it as the basis for teaching students to read and write. Instead, they continue to use the “whole word/language” approach alone, which has been a failure for too many children and students who have been left behind by a method that has been proven to not effectively work for all students.
So we can either do something about it immediately, or we can continue to keep our heads in the sand and deny the seriousness of this (il)literacy crisis that we have in this country!
Please check out the book: Blueprint for a Literate Nation, How You Can Help (Kindle Edition) -by Cinthia Coletti… And it can be purchased for only 99 cents!!! Description: “Millions of American children today are struggling in school systems largely unable to meet their needs, and the problem will only deepen if we continue to approach it with anything less than total dedication to a solution. The widespread illiteracy and learning difficulty afflicting our children is not “somebody else’s problem”; it is a severe threat to the up-and-coming generation of thinkers and workers—America’s future workforce, electorate, and global community. We know what must be done to meet this threat, we see the changes happening already, and we must commit to keeping up our momentum. The time has come to turn the tide away from our country’s impending economic and societal catastrophe and toward the reemergence of a literate, dynamic America. This book not only provides facts and statistics that will scare and disturb you but also relates stories and scientific findings that will inspire you to make your own contributions to the cause. By following the intuitive, data-validated plan presented in these pages, you can help to steer the American education system in the right direction and keep it afloat—before it takes the entire nation down with it.”
So instead of ignoring the epidemic of children in need of a more effective education provided by our schools and supported by our tax dollars, we should be demanding that our schools be held accountable and to ensure that these practices that equate to decades of educational neglect and malpractice that has been allowed to continue as acceptable practice for too long, should instead be replaced with more effective educational practice models with more frequent assessments, to ensure that our children’s educational needs are effectively being met. In an age of technology, we need to start including it into the curriculum for all students, especially for those students that are struggling with reading and writing at grade level. It should be a temporary bridge used in the interim until they can be brought up to grade level reading and writing skill sets, which can happen in 2 to 3 years (or less in some cases) using daily, rigorous OG approaches! [I doubt that any parents that home-school their children would be allowed to let their children fall and remain so far behind in grade level sets, yet our public schools are allowed to do just that, without any accountability or repercussions enforced to ensure that progress is being made! How many school districts are not held accountable because their cohort sizes do not meet a large enough number of students? How many CASDA reports in NYS have to demonstrate that our schools in NY are failing our most neediest students year, after year, after year, without any repercussions?
So, please start taking a more active look and interest into the quality of work that your children are doing in school. I think you might be shocked to see that they might not be reading and writing to grade level standards. And if that is OK with you, then I guess that is your prerogative and it is your child’s future, but do not then complain when your children are unable to meet the more rigorous standards of Common Core, the entrance requirements & demands of college, vocational school or their inability to find a decent paying job after high school graduation. Because, it will be competitive enough for those that do have appropriately developed skill sets and can demonstrate true grade level proficiency and college readiness standards. If you think the current educational status quo is acceptable, then don’t complain when your children are continued to be left behind.
I personally want and expect more from our public school system and for our hard earned tax dollars! The current model is a failure and unfortunately would not pass a cost-benefit analysis in most cases.
Students should not be graduating with a high school diploma, stating that they have met rigorous academic standards, if that truly is not the case. And too many colleges can attest to the fact that too many of the students graduating from high school, are not close to being prepared for college, even after attending 13+ years in traditional schools! That is a sad realization and we should be ashamed as a nation about this epidemic, yet we are doing little to ensure that things are changing and getting better in regards to holding our schools accountable for failing too many children and youth, imho!
Schools need to start teaching all children effectively and ensuring they are able to read & write at or as close to grade level by the time they graduate from high school, when they are cognitively able to benefit from effective instructional practices! Let’s change the trajectory for our children immediately and provide them with the mandated and proper instructional services they need!
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The implementation of the CC standards was not rushed nor was it botched. What you are experiencing is the proper and faithful implementation of highly prescriptive and really, really bad, often developmentally inappropriate, learning standards. If you can find a classroom where they are “working” I guarantee they are not being faithfully carried out. Kudos to the teachers who do the right thing and pretend they are implementing true CC standards.
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You are a windbag and an idiot. There is no way to ready kids for material that’s developmentally inappropriate. Or didn’t you know that about Common Core?
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You rastamick are the idiot if you think the current educational model is producing students that are reading and writing at grade level.
How about teachers finally start teaching students to read and write with grade level PROFICIENCY and then teachers should not have too worry about teaching to ANY given test, because their students will then be able think critically about any text they are given to read and subsequently write about it!!!! RAgeAgainstTheTestocracy: There are teachers using and implementing CC in their classrooms with success, but most of you clearly won’t acknowledge that because you are too closed minded and have “drank the kool aid” of the establishment and.the status quo to even consider that option….
Why should any parents be required to send their child(ren) to schools that are not teaching them to read and write with grade level proficiency? They might as well stay home if their credentialed teachers can’t effectively instruct them and are allowing them to not close and worse yet, widen their skill set deficits year after year, even when classified as special ed and in need of Tier 3 remedial instruction? Why should parents continue to reward ineffective instructional practices by sending kids into a classroom where day after day & year after year, the bar is lowered/buried so deep that it’s all but ignored and forgotten???
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