Contact: Bill O'Reilly, 212-396-9117 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


 

ASTORINO: GOVERNOR, LEGISLATURE, STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT MUST HOLD PUBLIC HEARINGS ON

REPEALING COMMON CORE


 "This is now a movement, and Albany must heed us."  


 

New York--Apr. 24...Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, who has led the fight for full repeal and replacement of the Common Core curriculum with a set of higher standards devised at the local level with the input of parents and teachers, today called for public hearings throughout New York State on repealing Common Core.   

 

"Almost two hundred thousand students, and possibly more, boycotted the experimental and ill-conceived Common Core math test this week," Mr. Astorino said. "What began as a protest has turned into a full bore movement, and Albany had better heed it.  When hundreds of thousands of New York parents, including my wife and I, pull their children out of a standardized test, something is wrong with the test. If Albany officials think they know better than the people who empower them, they do so at their peril. "

 

Mr. Astorino, who began his public service career as a school board member, and whose wife, Sheila, is a special education teacher, said that Common Core is untested, poorly and secretly devised, developmentally inappropriate, disruptive to wider learning, and federally rather than locally engineered, among other concerns. He also noted that New York State was in the process of developing the highest academic standards in America when Common Core was aggressively presented by the federal government as a way to get billions of one-shot dollars -- and that the two content experts on the Common Core validation committee both said the standards were of "poor quality" and do more harm than good. Their concerns were expunged from the final report.  

 

"Every parent wants higher standards for his and her children," Astorino continued. "We don't oppose Common Core or the tests because they're hard. We oppose them because they are poor and misguided, and may actually be lowering some academic standards. Albany leaders and the State Education Department have an obligation to listen to parents -- really listen to parents -- at hearings across New York. The question is, do they have guts to hold them? "     


 

###