State’s timeline would have New York-specific standards replace Common Core in 2017

New York’s transition from the Common Core to its own, modified set of learning standards will take the next 18 months, and won’t affect state tests until spring 2019, according to a timeline officials presented Monday.

The timeline indicates that the state will move deliberately as it adjusts the standards, which the state adopted in 2010 and implemented quickly over the next few years. Education officials faced criticism for not preparing schools and teachers well enough before introducing the standards, which have come under fire more recently as a widespread opt-out movement raised new concerns about state tests.

“We don’t want this to be so fast that we lose people and leave them behind,” State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia said Monday of the state’s plan to re-examine the standards. “This has to be a fluid schedule, I will tell you, because it would not pay for us to push something through if in fact we felt like we were putting people in positions where they couldn’t possibly handle it.”

The state’s proposal would have most of 2016 spent appointing committees to further review the Common Core, soliciting public comment, and then revising the standards, which offer benchmarks for what students should learn in each grade in English and math.

The committees will include parents, teachers, and business representatives, officials said, and the public comment period will include regional forums. State officials abruptly canceled (and then rescheduled) a series of Common Core-focused forums in 2013, saying that disruptive attendees made it impossible to have productive discussions.

The Board of Regents would vote on the changes to the standards in November 2016, giving school districts the spring and summer of 2017 to revise their curriculums and train teachers.

The new standards wouldn’t be incorporated into state tests until the following school year, which begins in 2018.