NEW PALTZ – State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia visited various schools in the New Paltz area, including BOCES, Tuesday and followed that with an all-day series of forums for various local education groups to discuss the state of education in New York, focusing specifically on concerns with the Common Core.
Elia (podium) meets with local educators in New Paltz
Elia, who has been in her position since July, has been traveling to school districts around the state holding forums for teacher, parent and administrative groups.
As a result of those sessions, Elia has narrowed down what the collective concerns of these groups seem to be with regard the Common Core curriculum.
She said the state has had issues with the standards, the curriculum, the assessments and the evaluation system.
“If you put an evaluation system in and everybody gets used to it and everybody understands it and everybody, even if they don’t always agree with it, they know where they’re going, they know how it’s going to work, that’s one thing but, what happened in New York is we’ve had multiple changes and people would start down a pathway and then there’d be a change; then, they’d start down that pathway and then there’d be another change,” Elia said. “We did it four times and I think that’s where we are right now, right.”
Mike McCall, former school board president and parent, raised another concern during the forum regarding testing transparency for students and parents.
“I just want to see that us use these tests to be a learning tool for students, that when we go ahead and take this test, that we actually get the results back and the students and the teachers and even the parents can learn from the tests; that we get valuable feedback,” said McCall.
For these clearly identified issues, Commissioner Elia offered some possible solutions like reduction of testing time, removal of sections of tests deemed inappropriate, a teacher group to evaluate tests prior to them being administered, individual districts having control over the ways the standards are worked into the curriculum, giving ESL (English as a Second Language) students and students with disabilities proper accommodations during testing, as well as giving more authority regarding these assessments to teachers and parents.
Orange/Ulster BOCES District Superintendent William Hecht said he was impressed by the commissioner’s efforts regarding the Common Core issue and was satisfied with the discussions at the forum.
“She’s listening to the parents, she’s listening to the educators, she’s taking that information into account as she makes big decisions moving forward,” said Hecht. “Certainly, she addressed the importance of the Common Core but, we need to look at in terms of how it’s being used with regard to teacher evaluations. For me the biggest take out of today, is that she is being very responsive and that’s something we need to appreciate and we in the field need to work with her to share that news, that information, with the educators, with the parents and with the students. We need to work to make it better and I think she’s here, she clearly stated that and I think that’s very positive and that’s something we’re looking forward to,” he said.
Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther said the day was, “tremendous” and that “it increases all of our awareness.”
Progress so far has yielded a survey, of which 10,500 parents, educators and administrators took part in, collecting information on the various concerns of Common Core. A new company has been hired to create the assessments, as many felt the last company who created the previous assessments did not do an adequate job with them and for spring 2016, the grades 3-8 assessments will be shortened in the areas of Language Arts and Mathematics.
