Anthony DelMundo/for New York Daily News
New York State Education Commissioner John King in the hot seat is rightly backed by Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch.
The knives are out for one of the best commissioners of education New York State has ever had. All those who care about raising standards for kids — who are being egregiously underserved in the state’s public schools — must stand up and say:
Hell, no, John King won’t go.
If you’re unfamiliar with King, that’s because he’s no publicity-grabbing bombthrower. He is a committed and consistent reformer who is helping to shepherd one of the most important upgrades to schooling in a generation.
It’s called the Common Core, and it’s urgently needed because only a third of New York City high-school graduates are ready for college or career — an abysmal, embarrassing number.
Put another way: Two-thirds of all city kids go from kindergarten through senior year of high school without absorbing the reading, writing, math and reasoning skills they need to succeed in the increasingly competitive global economy.
It’s a national problem, and 47 states have resolved to fix it by embracing a tough new set of standards that promise to get young people on track from early on.
King’s only “crime” was to place New York at the vanguard of Common Core implementation. His courage in driving the critical reform, and tying it to teacher evaluations, is a chief reason why New York won $ 700 million in federal Race to the Top education funding.
Adoption of the Common Core standards required a forthright acknowledgement that the previously accepted benchmarks of success were severely deficient.
That’s why scores on this year’s reading and math standardized tests dropped precipitously — because students were asked to master tougher material that will be critical to their ultimate success in college or a career. That overdue reckoning has caused consternation among parents and teachers who’d rather stick their heads in the playground sand rather than discover what students really are and aren’t learning.
And so, opponents are standing athwart education reform history, yelling “stop.”
The national, state and city teachers unions want a three-year “moratorium” on connecting the new Common Core tests to any stakes for parents and students.
That’s code for stalling a necessary reform in order to kill it entirely once it has been weakened.
They are demanding that King halt full rollout of a teacher evaluation system that offers, for the first time, the chance to make objective distinctions between fantastic teachers and awful ones.
A parent group called New York State Allies for Public Education (allied in New York City with the radical anti-testing group Class Size Matters), seconded by state Sen. Jack Martins (R-Mineola), has gone so far as to call for King to resign.
They watched King get crudely lambasted at a town hall meeting on the Common Core — with one parent shouting that her child was being taught curriculum “like a little Nazi.”
After intially (and understandably) nixing four planned town halls as a result, King said Friday he would tour the state, making 16 stops to hear concerns, including four to be broadcast on TV.
We say: Good for King for answering critics head-on. We also say: Good for state Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, who set the Common Core policy that King is carrying out and is standing foursquare with him.
“John has a unique voice for educational reform that includes every child in every school district in every school building in New York State,” Tisch said on Friday, adding for emphasis:
“I’m not backing down here.”
Excellent. Not one inch.
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via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
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