NY Sets New English, Math Standards For All K-12 Schools: How They'll Affect Your Kid

ALBANY, NY — After two-plus years of rowdy meetings and PTA protests and messy Google Docs, the state is finally sticking a knife in its notorious set of "Common Core" education standards. New York state officials voted Monday to replace the state's old English and math standards for all public and private schools — drafted in 2010 as a hasty response to Bush's equally notorious No Child Left Behind Act, or “forced down our throats,” as one Long Island educator put it — with a new book of standards called "Next Generation."

New York's base plan for assessing its schools and teachers was also overhauled this week to jive with the Every Student Succeeds Act, Obama's somewhat gentler replacement for No Child Left Behind.

Together, these two new state documents are everything. Once they're approved by the feds, they'll dictate exactly what — and how — your kid learns in the classroom each year.

So when will all this go down?

The new English and math standards won't kick in fully until Fall 2020. Here's the state's timeline for phasing them into the curriculum:

• 2017-18 School Year: Officials will launch an "awareness building" campaign, conducting "two-day assessments" of current standards at each campus and training staff to meet the new ones.

• 2018-19 School Year & 2019-20 School Year: A "capacity building" campaign will include more two-day assessments and more staff training.

• September 2020: "Full implementation" of the new standards.

• Spring 2021: Revised state exams, tailored to the new standards, will be given to grades 3 through 8.

And just what makes the Next Generation standards so much better than Common Core?

For one, they're more thoughtful, and not as rushed. More than 130 teachers, parents and education experts reviewed thousands of public comments from across the state to come up with the final draft.

But many argue it's still just a superficial makeover, meant to appease the anti-Common Core crowd by trashing the old "politically charged" name and replacing it with something more feel-good.

"By preserving the Common Core — the attempt to rebrand has not changed its essence — we are condemning children to failure at a very early age," ed author and activist Susan Ocshorn wrote online Tuesday. She and others in her camp believe holding millions of diverse young kids to a single set of strict academic benchmarks — then pressuring teachers to warp their lesson plans around it — is a creativity-killer and a disservice to all involved. "We’re condemning them to the tread mill before they can even lace up their running shoes," Ocshorn wrote, adding: "We talk endlessly about producing critical thinkers, innovators, but we’re eliminating the kind of teaching and learning that nurtures them."

It's true that the Next Generation package does preserve the majority of Common Core's same old "anchor" standards; aka, specific language skills all children are expected to show by the end of each school year, as tested by the state. (Goals that have proven as ineffective as they are unpopular.)

Just like last time, more than five full pages of the new English standards doc are dedicated to the state's expectations of painfully young pre-kindergartners — vocab, grammar, writing, collaboration, text comprehension and more.

And math standards are laid out in even more excruciating detail than before. (For example, the vague command "prove theorems about triangles" has been expanded into a list of which theorems, exactly.) This could help prep kids better for state tests, but it could also discourage alternative teaching styles and lesson plans.

Next Generation appears to be the same old mistake in prettier packaging, its skeptics say. And it certainly is prettier. The new math standards are illustrated by colorful graphs and charts. The new English standards are printed in a bigger, friendlier font, buffered by holistic, new-agey intro passages on the importance of personalized "guidance and support," setting up "attractive" and "culturally diverse" classroom libraries, encouraging "play," etc. — touchy-feely nuance that was largely missing from Common Core's cut-and-dry English and math docs, but hasn't done much to appease the critics.

There's a reason, though, that normally cynical voices like that of New York's powerful teachers' union aren't entirely unhappy with this whole Next Generation thing.

Why? Because they know the state's new English and math standards won't have quite as much power as they did in the days of Common Core, thanks to two other new handbooks approved by state officials this week and sent off to Washington for approval: one on school assessment, and one on teacher certification.

These plans could start rolling out as soon as the start of the 2018 School Year. And when they do, they'll have a major impact at the local level — together dictating how the state rates and funds schools, intervenes when one falls behind, etc.

Here are some of the ways the new system could affect you and your kid.

(BTW: All this applies to schools in New York City as well, even though many of their day-to-day functions are under mayoral control, according to a spokesman for NYC Schools.)

• Schools will be rated using the same "Achievement Levels" as before: 1, 2, 3 and 4. (With 1 being the best.) However, the formula behind these ratings will now be much more complex, with a ton more data factored in. So you could see the rating of your kid's school rise or drop in the near future.

• To help explain these fluctuations, state officials will make each school's rating data more easily accessible online.

• When rating schools and teachers, the state will give less weight to standardized test scores. Meaning your kid's teachers may feel less pressure to "teach to the test," as they say.

• Students will still be allowed to opt out of state testing on an individual basis, as around one-fifth of New York youth already do. But just like now, schools where more than 5 percent of students skip the tests may miss out on certain state grants.

• The state will now reward schools who demonstrate growth in areas besides English and math — including science, social studies, college preparedness, career skills and AP testing. Your kid's curriculum might reflect this.

• High schools will be rewarded just as heavily for their five- and six-year graduates as four-year graduates. Critics worry this may create a less urgent environment for students, but only time will tell.

• Schools that report fewer student absences and out-of-school suspensions will also be rewarded. Experts still aren't sure how each school will work toward these goals, but your kid's campus could see a shift in disciplinary approach.

• Taking all these new rating metrics into consideration, officials will continue to intervene at New York's lowest-rated schools — as well as schools where certain races and subgroups (homeless kids, immigrants, English language learners, etc.) are performing the worst.

• Failing schools will receive additional state funds. But in return, they must allow inspectors to make on-campus visits, and must choose from a list of approved intervention strategies. This whole process could obviously affect your kid's experience at school — and, best case scenario, improve his or her education.

• If a failing school makes progress, it may qualify for even more state funding (to solidify and improve on these gains). If it doesn't make progress, the state will intervene further, deploying its own staff and resources on campus. And if after three years the school is still failing, it could very well be converted to a charter, CUNY or SUNY campus. It could even get shut down altogether.

• Transfer schools and "special act" schools, which have naturally lower graduation rates, will no longer be automatically subjected to the drastic measures detailed above (takeover, shutdown, etc). Instead, they'll get their own unique assessment on whether they're failing or making progress.

• Under a new “participatory budgeting” program, parents will be allowed to help 1) decide how emergency funds should be used at failing schools, 2) conduct “resource allocation reviews” of districts with a large number of failing schools, and 3) identify “target districts” in need of more state support.

• The bar to become a teacher will be lowered. A passing grade on the teacher certification exam will now be 40, down from 41. And even with a score of 38, it may still be possible to pass, if a teacher meets certain other criteria. (So you can see why the teachers' union is on board.)

• It's still unclear how, exactly, end-of-year state tests will be altered to reflect the Next Generation learning standards. But kids will likely see some changes in the way their tests are phrased and graded.

• If federal officials approve New York's recent request, students with certain learning disabilities will be allowed to take standardized tests up to two grades below their grade level.

You can read the state's new school assessment plan in its entirety here, its new teacher certification requirements here and its new English and math standards here. And here's a good point-by-point critique of the entire overhaul by an ed-policy consulting company in DC.

This story has been updated to include additional details.

Pictured at top: "In this Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2015 photo, Renee Pascoe works in her seventh grade accelerated math class at Holy Spirit School in East Greenbush, N.Y. The Diocese of Albany, New York, announced recently that it will reduce the frequency of the Common Core-aligned tests while sticking with the standards. The decision coincides with a call by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for “a total reboot” of the Common Core after his state became the epicenter of anti-testing sentiment." (AP Photo/Mike Groll)