Congress recently passed the Every Students Succeeds Act, restoring much authority back to states over education standards and policy. Successively, on the same day ESSA was signed into law by the President, Governor Cuomo’s Common Core Task Force released a report acknowledging the flawed use of state assessments to evaluate teachers and students and providing recommendations, particularly useful to students with disabilities and English language learners. The Board of Regents followed suit voting in support of the recommendations. 

All signal a shift in priority toward restoring local control over decision-making, but, the overbearing Education Transformation Act imposed by the governor and hastily passed by state lawmakers, remains. Suspiciously, the governor has claimed that the task force recommendations can be implemented without changes to this law, which requires that teachers be evaluated with state assessment scores. The law also categorizes particular schools as “failing” and “persistently failing,” primarily using state assessments for its data, and places those schools under “receivership” which grants decision-making “powers” to a “receiver,” in this case the state education department. 

The task force failed to address how state assessments apply to evaluating districts and schools, a practice unfairly punitive to urban districts and schools, particularly Buffalo, where 25 schools are currently under “superintendent receivership.” If state assessments have been deemed invalid in evaluating teachers and students, then, logically, the same should apply to how schools have been evaluated. Intertwined in this (and also not addressed by the task force), are the illogical cut scores determined by former Commissioner King, which almost guarantees that at least 70 percent of students fail each year. These predetermined cut scores have wrongly judged and punished many Buffalo Public Schools, most of which disproportionately consist of students with disabilities, English language learners, and students in poverty. 

The state imposed “receivership” under the guise that it would address the individual needs of “persistently failing” schools (five Buffalo Schools) with an additional $75 million in state aid. However, with the school year almost half surpassed amid a one-year mandate to show “demonstrable improvement” or face takeover by an “independent receiver,” these schools have yet to see a penny of this promised aid. 

Buffalo parents and students across the city do not want their public schools shut down or taken over by a private entity. They want their schools built up and provided necessary staffing, intervention, and whole-child learning and experiences with small class sizes. They want thriving public schools as hubs of their communities. 

With our state lawmakers returning to session in January, the time is now for substantial change in law, which can guide policy toward local control and decision-making. We need more than public proclamations and recommendations. We need change in law and policy. Contact and urge your local members in the Senate and Assembly to act now! 

Larry Scott is Buffalo Parent-Teacher Organization Co-Chair and a BPS Parent