Elia: Big changes coming for testing, evaluations, Common Core standards
ALBANY — Substantive changes will be made to testing, teacher evaluations and the Common Core learning standards in New York State, state education commissioner MaryEllen Elia said in a television interview set to air Monday night.
“We’ve already started it,” Elia told WCNY’s Susan Arbetter on "Connect:NY," which airs on PBS.
Elia said the state Education Department already is working on changes to the standards, has shortened the state exams and is looking at the teacher evaluation system.
She said she understands the concerns of test refusal groups, which have said they willkeep urging parents to opt their children out of the state and local exams linked to the teacher evaluations until they see change.
“I understand people saying, ‘Let me see it. I want to see it. I want to touch it. I want to make sure it’s there.’ Well, they’re going to be able to see it and touch it. That’s what we’re doing,” she said.
Elia was one of a number of guests on the show set to air Monday — among them State University of New York chancellor Nancy Zimpher, district superintendents, New York State United Teachers president Karen Magee and Lisa Rudley, a founding member of New York State Allies for Public Education, a parent-run group leading the charge on the opt-out movement.
The group discussed how dramatically the state of the education reform movement in New York State has changed in just the last few weeks — with the passage of a federal education law, the release Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Common Core task force's final report and new regulatory changes from the Board of Regents.
On Dec. 10, President Barack Obama signed a broad federal education law, replacing No Child Left Behind, to give states more freedom over assessments and evaluations. What impact that law will have is still being interpreted by federal education officials, who have told POLITICO New York they have issued guidance to individual states.
That same day, Cuomo's task force — whose members included Zimpher and Elia — released its report, calling for an overhaul of the state's Common Core standards and recommending a moratorium on the use of student state test scores in teacher evaluations. And days later, the Regents passed emergency regulations enacting a moratorium through the 2019-2020 school year, saying they would review the system.
In the television interview, Rudley said she was skeptical of changes actually taking Elia: Big changes coming for testing, evaluations, Common Core standards | POLITICO:
