The majority of New Yorkers have positive feedback for Common Core standards, according to the results from a large survey — but state officials are planning to overhaul them anyway.
More than 70 percent of respondents in a survey that included 10,500 New York residents said positive things about Common Core. There was more criticism and suggestions for how to improve Common Core implementation for earlier grades than later grades, according to the survey. The majority of the respondents were teachers.
The results are interesting given that the survey was legally mandated as part of New York’s review of the Common Core standards. A task force created by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) to review the standards released a report last week saying that standardized testing and teacher evaluations need to be overhauled completely.
As the task force further reviews these practices, test scores from Common Core aligned standardized tests will not be used to measure students’ or teachers’ performance. The task force recommended a transition until the 2019–2020 school year, when the state can implement a new system.
A policy shift for New York state coincides with a national shift
This retreat from heavy consideration of testing in teacher evaluations and a rejection of Common Core is a big shift for the governor, who, when he created the task force in September, said he wanted to “overhaul the Common Core system — to do a total reboot.”
Cuomo was supportive of the standards, which were rolled out in 2010, and proposed that consideration of test results in teacher evaluations should be boosted to 50 percent from 20 percent only a year ago. Cuomo was so supportive of weighing tests heavily in evaluations that he threatened to withhold state education funding if the evaluation reforms weren’t adopted.
After the change in teacher evaluations, however, there was considerable backlash from teachers unions. One teacher filed a lawsuit against the New York Department of Education, claiming the evaluation system is unfair and inaccurate, as evidenced by a major swing in her rating. In addition, 20 percent of all state students decided not to take standardized tests as part of a larger “opt-out” movement. Although the American Federation of Teachers approves of Common Core state standards, its president, Randi Weingarten, has criticized New York’s poor implementation of Common Core standards and the role of testing in teacher evaluations.
The Obama administration has also backed off from its previous approach to standardized tests and teacher evaluations. Although the administration touted the use of tests in teacher evaluations for keeping teachers accountable, the U.S. Department of Education has offered to help reduce the number of tests for teacher evaluation and suggests that the percentage of time spent on tests be kept under 2 percent.
Time spent on New York state tests
New York has its own cap on time spent on tests. In 2014, the New York legislature passed a law capping instructional hours spent on state-administered tests at 1 percent. There is also a 1 percent limit on other standardized tests.
However, a recent paper from researchers at SUNY New Paltz found that there’s more time given to testing than initially meets the eye.
According to the paper, when you take into account the administrative tasks that go into testing students in English and math — such as setting up the classroom for a test, counting and giving out tests, reading directions for tests, and making sure students get testing accommodations — the percentage of time spent on testing is more like 2 percent. For example, on a typical exam day for New York students in grades three through six, 27 percent of the time was spent actually taking tests while 14 and 15 percent of the time was spent on pre-test tasks and post-test tasks, respectively. The numbers were similar for grades seven and eight.
Testing time also eats into instructional time; three-quarters of teachers surveyed said they were less likely to introduce new academic material on testing days, with some teachers stating that a state exams over the course of a few days can derail real instruction for the whole day.
Support for Common Core nationally
However, it’s important to distinguish support for Common Core state standards versus support for less standardized testing. Some people may support higher standards and national guidelines for math and English Language Arts curricula, but not what they consider to be an unnecessary or burdensome amount of time spent on tests or the use of tests for teacher evaluations.
A PDK/Gallup poll released in August, for example, found that 64 percent of respondents said there is too much focus on testing. The majority of respondents said that success in education should be measured by student engagement and students’ outlook for the future.
Opinions on the standards themselves shift easily, depending on how knowledgeable people are about Common Core and whether they’re aware of the motivations for creating the standards.
For example, a national survey released in August found that support for “Common Core” is continuing to fall, with 49 percent seeing it favorably this year compared to 53 percent last year and 65 percent in 2013. However, a poll conducted by Public Policy Polling and commissioned by the Center for American Progress found that Americans are broadly supportive of the concepts behind Common Core: 79 percent of voters want a set of high-quality academic standards or goals in English and math, with the input of the community on how to develop curricula and 78 percent supported annual tests in English and math for accountability. (Disclosure: ThinkProgress is an editorially independent site affiliated with the Center for American Progress.)
Now that Common Core has become an increasingly controversial term on both the right and left, there are questions about how accurate people’s perceptions of the standards are.
According to poll from PublicMind at Farleigh Dickinson University released earlier this year, for instance, 77 percent of people who said they had heard a lot about the standards incorrectly believed that subjects such as history, global warming, and sex education are included. Considering how politicized the standards have become, it’s no surprise that New York may be the next state to join many states conducting reviews of the standards and aligned tests, as well as states that have kept most of the standards’ elements but changed the name.