Common Core Update—Breaking News

BY CHERYL SLAVIN

Just days after local legislators held a public forum on common core issues, including a discussion about the Legislature’s push for a moratorium on common core implementation, the state Board of Regents announced that it will adopt several measures that will delay the impact of Common Core-related state assessments on educators and students, and reduce the level of local school district testing associated with the new teacher evaluation law and higher standards for teaching and learning. Highlights include:

• A five year extension of the mandatory common core based graduation requirements; the first class to be held to the higher graduation standards will be in 2022, a full 12 years after the initial adoption of common core.
• Greater teacher supports, training, and funding for training so that educators are adequately prepared to teach to the higher standards.
• Two year delay of the link to high stakes testing for teacher evaluations, in order to give the teachers additional time to adapt to the new curriculum.
• Delayed launch of the data dashboards related to inBloom to allow SED to work with legislators to address concerns about data security and third party providers used by the State and districts.

It is to be noted that implementation of the standards themselves has not been rescinded; most educators still believe that the higher standards are necessary to ensure global competitiveness for future New York graduates.

  common core, regents, update