Talkin' Loud & Clear

[Chris_Wendt]

The story of the day is not happening in Washington, where a deal had been a foregone conclusions for more than two weeks. That deal is at hand, and the proverbial can is about to get kicked down the long and winding road, all the way to next year.

But the BIG NEWS is the fact that people are now waking up to the debacle known as the 2013 Common Core Assessments, and taking their anger directly to the one man directly responsible for letting loose the hounds on New York's 2.7 million students last spring: State Education Commissioner John B. King.

Due to near riots in upstate meetings King recently had, the Commissioner has canceled several other town hall meetings, one in Garden City and three others around the state.

Yesterday, King caught hell from parents, educators, and legislators in an invitation-only meting in Oyster Bay. NY State Senator Jack Martins called upon King to either re-instate those meetings he canceled, or "immediately resign". My sentiments, precisely. I like it when a state official succinctly voices my own sentiments—loud and clear—directly to our intended target.

Let's refresh some points here about the Common Core, or more accurately, the Assessments associated with the Common Core.

• Although the common core curriculum has been implemented to some and varying degrees, the necessary pieces in preparation were not released or provided to teachers or their students prior to the assessments being unleashed on them
  
  
• NYSED (and King) is a member of the multi-state PARCC consortium, the "Common" part of the Common Core. PARCC agreed to and published a schedule for developing and implementing Common Core Assessments, which called for development last year, this year, and next year; implementation in 2014-15, and standard-setting (scoring methodology) to follow the initial results being evaluated in 2015. That was in intended to prevent exactly what happened in NY last school year.
  
  
• The Common Core Curriculum may turn out to be the best thing since sliced bread, but the way NY (King) dropped it like a bomb on NY schools was totally counterproductive, meaning:
  
  
  • the horrible 2013 Assessment results will not achieve any positive results for or from Common Core Curriculum
    
    
  • the impact of extremely depressed scores on low-performing schools and struggling students will be solidly in the range of devastating

I would like to see the Common Core work, and so would many others. I do not believe that it will work or survive after this tragic episode, however.

Those of you who disagree with me about this, while I recognize and appreciate our differences on this topic, you certainly have an issue with Commissioner King, or you should have. He has hurt your cause, perhaps irrevocably.

Chris Wendt

[rr]

Chris, I somewhat agree with your points but in reality those Town Halls were doomed from the get go. The only people probably willing to go are those that hate the concept of Common Core and how it's been implemented. I'll say it again, there has to be a transitional period and honestly I don't know how hard these test scores will impact teacher assessments as it only represents a minority portion of their annual score. After reviewing the documentation you linked to I still think that most of the teachers will do well on that portion of their assessments along with the test scores will rise over the next few years. To me, they've taken reasonable steps to ease the transition...

Where I work there isn't much room for discussion, if I'm tasked with a new role or responsibilities I'm expected to figure out a way to achieve the goal or I can find myself on the outside looking in. I'm not comparing jobs with teachers but I feel like most teachers or plenty of them at least, are on board with things. That's the feeling I get from those that I've interacted with...of course I am a parent and they probably won't bash the whole system to my face but as they say, time will tell...

Curious though...how does one get the invite for these town halls? You mentioned it was invite only...and I couldn't read the article because I don't have Cablevision or a Newsday subscription...

[Chris_Wendt]

In reply to the question:

"...how does one get the invite for these town halls? You mentioned it was invite only..."

In my experience there are several annual meetings sponsored by various organizations on LI or elsewhere in the state, including NYC. Those organizations generally include the Nassau County Council of School Superintendents, the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association, R.E.F.I.T., NYS School Boards Association, NYS Council of School Superintendents, etc. To be invited to any of those you would either be a member of the organization, or, invited by a member who would generally be your district's representative to the organization holding the event. However, in this case, the meeting was arranged by NYS Senator Carl Marcellino (R-Syosset), and it appears the invitees were the superintendents and BoE members from the school districts in his Senatorial District. There were 100 invitees mostly invited by their school superintendents.

This was a high-level meeting, meaning, in addition to the Commissioner of Education, Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Long Island's Regent, Roger Tilles also attended.

References were made to State Senator Jack Martins (R-Mineola) and to Richard Iannuzzi, President of NYSUT, the state teachers union, each calling for King's resignation. It was not clear whether either of these two men were actually present at the meeting.

I would take a cue from Richard Iannuzzi's position concerning where many NY teachers stand on the rushed and botched implementation of the Common Core Assessments.

I hope you get to read the article.

Regards

Chris Wendt