Shelly Silver Says Case For Delay In Common Core Reform Agenda Has Been Made

SED Commissioner King and Regents Chancellor Tisch seemed not to be listening to the public during their Gospel of the Common Core Tour in November and December, but the members of the legislature - including Assembly Speaker Silver - were:

ALBANY—Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said Tuesday he expects the state Board of Regents to form a plan for improving and possibly delaying implementation of the rigorous Common Core curriculum standards.

Silver said he would wait to see what “remedial actions” the Regents come up with before attempting to intervene with legislation.

“I think the case has been made, if nothing else, for a delay and a reevaluation of the implementation of Common Core,” Silver said. “The problem with it is … No. 1, it was suddenly put upon teachers and students and administrators and schools. The support for it was not forthcoming as quickly as the rigors of Common Core, and the training wasn't there for a lot of the teachers that are charged with using it as the basis for their education.”

If the Regents come back with a plan that has little-to-no action on Common Core implementation, the Endless Testing regime, and inBloom, we will have to put pressure onto the legislature to pass into law the fixes that need to be made.

Silver sounds today like he knows the state's education reform agenda is increasingly unpopular and would be open to legislative fixes.

Lawmakers have proposed bills to address teachers' and parents' concerns over implementation, testing and the use of student data.

Silver said “the first opportunity should be [for] the Regents.”

If the Regents don't present a plan shortly, “we'll go from there,” he said.

Ultimately I think that is what's going to have to happen.

Hard to see Tisch and her sham Regents task force making any substantial changes to the reform agenda - they already told us they won't:

The goal is not to undo what's been done or slow the pace of reform, said task force members, whose first meeting is Wednesday. It wouldn't make sense, for example, to go back to testing on the old learning standards, they said. Instead, the task force will focus on how to improve professional development and communication and look for ways to cut down on the time students spend taking tests, perhaps by encouraging districts to replace local assessments with some other measure in teacher evaluations.

In short, the Regents task force is another attempt at propaganda, making it look like the Regents are responsive to public concerns when they're not responsive at all.

So let Tisch and Company come in with their sham report, then we'll expose it as the sham it is and go from there.

Legislators in Albany are hearing public concern over Common Core, APPR, testing, and inBloom - even if the Regents and SED are not.