It’s official: New York has moved to adopt a revised set of learning standards that, among other changes, ditches the politically charged “Common Core” moniker.
New York’s Board of Regents voted in committee Monday to accept the Next Generation Learning Standards, capping off a nearly two-year revision process. The new standards include a number of changes to what students must learn, but they also serve a political purpose of distancing the state from the controversial Common Core brand.
“For two years we have been working and getting feedback,” said State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia. “So we’re very excited to bring this to you now.”
The new standards — which spell out the knowledge and skills students should acquire at each grade level — try to ensure students are learning the right skills at the appropriate grade level and clarify vague or confusing wording in the previous standards.
For instance, in an earlier draft of the revised standards, the state swapped the words “grade-level” text in a third-grade reading standard with “a variety of texts,” presumably to meet the needs of students who can’t yet read material written for students their age. In another example, a Common Core geometry standard read “Prove theorems about triangles,” while New York’s revised version lists the specific theorems students had to prove.
The Common Core standards have become a national lightning rod, with critics on the right saying they represent federal overreach (even though they were created by a consortium of states) and some educators insisting they made unrealistic demands of young students. Many states across the country have dropped the name Common Core and started their own revision processes.
In New York, the standards became closely linked with the high-stakes annual exams that students take. After one in five students boycotted those tests in 2015, Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for the standards to be revised.
The state convened committees that included many teachers to review the standards. When the initial revisions came out, State Commissioner MaryEllen Elia said the state was not “just tinkering around the edges” and noted that more than half the standards were changed. But the updates range from small wording tweaks to eliminating some standards entirely.
Stephen Sigmund, executive director of High Achievement New York, a coalition formed in support of the standards, said on Friday that the revised standards were similar enough to the Common Core that adopting them would signal that New York remains committed to tough standards.
“It’s an important moment to ensure that high expectations and high standards are enshrined into New York’s education system,” Sigmund said. “There’s been an effort to undermine and get rid of high standards and if, in fact, the Regents vote for the Next Generation Standards as they exist, that effort will have failed.”
Those who pushed against the standards were displeased with the result. Lisa Rudley, a founding member of New York State Allies for Public Education, which helped lead the movement to boycott state tests, said on Friday she thought much more work needed to be done to the early-grade standards.
Rudley said she is part of a large group that includes many educators who believe the early standards are “nowhere where they should be and they’re not appropriate.”
The standards for younger students remain a major sticking point for critics who say they are too rigid and don’t provide enough wiggle room for students who aren’t ready to tackle them, particularly students with disabilities or English learners. At one point, a group of educators called for the state to delay rolling out the early-grade standards until they had been revised further.
In order to address some of those concerns, the state education department added an Early Learning Standards Introduction, which provides more guidance on how to teach students, including English learners and those with disabilities. However, some of the Regents seemed concerned Monday that the revised early-grade standards may still not be totally appropriate for young students.
“I have been hearing and reading over the past several months the concerns about the … early childhood [standards],” said Regent Kathleen Cashin. “It bothers me because I would like to have a consensus” among the public about whether the standards are appropriate, she said.
It will still be awhile before the new standards make it into classrooms. Assuming the full board approves them at its meeting Tuesday, they are not expected to be in full use in classrooms until 2020. And students will not be tested on them until 2021, according to state officials who released a timeline on Monday.
The new standards are available here.