NY Lawmaker Challenges Cuomo to Take 5th-Grade Common Core Tests, Share Results

Barbara Boland | April 3, 2015
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In response to an education budget bill that would continue funding for Common Core, a New York lawmaker laid out a unique challenge to New York Governor Cuomo. 

"Governor, if you're listening, I've got a challenge for you," said New York State Assemblyman Jim Tedisco (R-N.Y.) to Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) "If you think the Holy Grail of improving our education is Common Core testing, I got a challenge. I want you to sit in the Red Room, I'll bring in the fifth-grade Common Core math test, the fifth-grade Common Core English test, and then we'll evaluate what your scores are and we'll release them to the public. And I believe you won't prove you're smarter than a fifth-grader when we're done."

Tedisco laid out his challenge in response to an education budget bill that would continue to find Common Core in New York.

"People have stood up and said, 'The problem with our education system is bad teachers,'" said Tedisco. "That is absolutely not the problem with our educational system."

"Ninety-nine to 95 percent of our educators are great," he continued. "They're outstanding, they're working hard, they love what they're doing."

He said that there were three problems with the educational system in New York state:

  1. Billions of dollars were taken out of it,
  2. An "antiquated formula" is in use that shafts impoverished districts and special needs students, and
  3. There''s no autonomy. 

"We got suburban schools, we have rural schools, we have urban schools, but we have a one-size-fits-all formula," said Tedisco. "We need to allow superintendents, administrators, school boards to use the funding the way they know best and to provide them more autonomy, not fit them into the same niches."

The New York State United Teachers union has called for a boycott of the Common Core tests.

 

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