A group of panelists made up of state and local officials and educators agreed Monday that the state’s education system needs change to its current Common Core standards and remove the use of student standardized test scores in teacher evaluations.
Speaking at a Great Neck Public Schools forum at Great Neck South High School, panelists discussed the future of the state’s public education policies and what is being done at the state level to implement changes.
The panel consisted of state Sen. Carl Marcellino, state Sen. Jack Martins, Roger Tilles, a member of the Board of Regents tenth judicial district; state Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel; Great Neck Public Schools Superintendent Teresa Prendergast; Great Neck Teachers Association President Sheila Henchy; and the United Parent-Teacher Council’s Co-Presidents Joanne Chan and Sarah Moss.
Marcellino, who represents the fifth Senate district and is a member of the Senate’s education committee, said the Common Core does not address the needs of individual students.
“Kids learn differently. Some kids are listeners, some kids are readers,” he said. “One thing you learn when you travel is that one size does not fit all. It does not work that way in a classroom and it does not work that way when you’re trying to make national policy.”
The standards, first introduced in 2012, are intended to teach conceptual thinking and problem-solving skills at each grade level to prepare students for more complex future coursework.
Some educators and administrators say the ideas behind the curriculum are strong, but its rollout has caused problems for New York’s teachers and students.
Schimel said state lawmakers consistently focus on big groups in addressing problems rather than individuals.
“No one size fits all, but in a bureaucracy, often times, we try to solve things with one size fits all,” she said.
Tilles said he has seen successes in schools using the standards but teachers used creative methods to slightly alter the guidelines provided by the state.
“I have seen tremendous programs using the Common Core standards,” he said. “But the teachers have collaborated for the curriculum and not taking the modules that are given by the state.”
Prendergast said she wanted to see education policies made by local officials with ties to each school district.
“It is so important for communities to maintain that local control,” she said. “Particularly in communities where they have opportunities where they have partnerships with the school boards and teachers and administrators to make those decisions that best impact the children to which they serve.”
Currently, the state Legislature sets standards for what students should know and be able to accomplish at each grade level, and local school districts create curriculum based on those standards.
Schimel said she wanted to give education-based decisions back to people who work in the field.
“It is my hope, and it has been the Assembly’s hope, to finally work on shifting policy decisions of education away from someone like me who is not an educator, back to the regents,” she said.
Marcellino agreed, saying the state Legislature should worry about monetary issues rather than setting education standards.
“Let the legislature take care of the funding and financing, because that’s what we do,” he said. “But let the professionals take care of education policy and writing curriculum because that’s what they do best.”
Due to heavy opposition of the Common Core system, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in September that he was launching a Common Core Task Force to review education standards and identify problems with the system, a review commission he also launched in 2012.
Marcellino, who is a member of the task force chaired by Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons, said he had to force his way on to the group.
“I made sure that I was chosen to be on that task force by pushing my way on it. I don’t think I was the governor’s first choice to be there,” he said. “I made sure in conversations I had with the majority leader that if there was going to be a Senate representative it was going to be me.”
While he praised the efforts of Cuomo and the members of the task force, Marcellino said he did not believe the Dec. 15 deadline for the task force to submit a final report was enough time to find a solution to the problem.
Common Core’s biggest flash points for criticism are its standardized tests, which opponents say are unnecessarily tough for students, and the direct link between test scores and teacher evaluations.
The Annual Professional Performance Review, or APPR, assesses teachers based on how well their students score on standardized tests compared with the previous year’s results.
Although he admitted the negative effect APPR would have on teachers, Martins, who represents the seventh senate district, said the assessments have more of an effect on students.
“The real crime when it comes to APPR is not necessarily that we treat all of our teachers like they are the same,” Martins said. “It is because we treat all of our children like they are robots.”
Common Core standards need reform, Tilles said, but the method for evaluating teachers needed to be scrapped altogether.
Prendergast added that teachers were not opposed to assessments, but wanted evaluations to let them know how they can become better teachers.
