Lawmakers will review New Yorks recent education reform agenda, including Common Core national education standards, in public September hearings.

The quality of Common Core, state assessments, and student privacy are the main issues the hearings will address after widespread public outcry largely centered on testing.

“We are holding the hearings to see if we’re getting a good bank for our buck,” said Sen. John Flanagan (R-Smithtown), chairman of the Senate’s education committee.

In New York, education policy and administration is monitored by a Board of Regents that consists of 16 members the legislature elects. In 2010, it adopted a new reform agenda in line with President Obama’s education policy priorities: both center on Common Core, student data systems, teacher and principal evaluations, and overhauling failing schools.

The relationship between the board of regents and legislature is mostly financial, with the legislature funding the board’s plans, Flanagan said.

One Test to Rule Them All
Long Island principal Carol Burris hopes she can testify at the hearings on state testing and Common Core standards. She has become a public critic of both. Burris oversees South Side High School. In 2010, she was named Educator of the Year and New York State High School Principal of the Year in 2013. In 2012,U.S. New and World Report named South Side High School the 22nd best high school in the nation.  

Long before New York entered national Common Core tests, Burris believed tying myriad policies to student test results harms education.

Although assessments are important tools that help educators measure what students know and what they do with information, it is dangerous to use them otherwise, she said.

“Test scores are used to close schools, evaluate teachers, and to retain students,” Burris said. “When that happens, you have to careful. They can cause teacher behavioral changes [in the classroom] which is not in the interest of the child.”

‘Climate of Fear’
This means a teacher will tend to focus on students whose scores will improve and boost his or her evaluation, she said. Burris says that PARCC testing aligns with the dangers of high stakes testing, a system that has been proven to be inefficient.

Mother and special education teacher Jia Lee, who teaches in New York City, said she became an activist because of testing research federal and local lawmakers have ignored.

“High stakes testing has made a climate of fear in schools,” she said. “It’s all about surviving.”

Other parents joined Lee to start Change the Stakes, an organization campaigning against high-stakes testing in New York.

Privacy Concerns
Parents all over New York have flooded public meetings to complain about the state’s partnership with inBloom, a data-mining company partly funded by Bill Gates. The nonprofit initially partnered with eight states to use student information through testing. To date, five of the eight states have withdrawn from the partnership after public outcry over inBloom’s plans to amass datapoints about millions of children including Social Security numbers, hobbies, attitudes about school, learning disabilities, test scores, addresses, and more.

“New York City has transferred the city’s information onto the data cloud without parent’s even knowing about it,” Lee said. “There is no transparency or accountability at the top.”

Mother Yvonne Gasperino, who initiated Stop Common Core in New York State, has partnered with parents in 36 of the state’s 62 counties to fight Common Core standards.

“Senator Flanagan holding these hearings is a positive” Gasperino said. “My fear is that he will not give the opportunity to testify to both sides.”

Flanagan said the hearings will occur sometime during the third week of September. He plans to hold four all over the state. To save time, only invited testimony will be allowed. But he says there will be opportunities for public comment, as well.

“We plan to have a very solid cross-section of opinion,” Flanagan said.

Image by Ken Lund. This article has been corrected to reflect the accurate number of states that have withdrawn from inBloom.