Senator Flanagan And Senator Felder Partner Host Education Hearing In New York City

Senator John Flanagan (2nd Senate District), Chairman of the New York State Senate Standing Committee on Education, today joined with his colleague Senator Simcha Felder (17^th Senate District), the Chair of the New York City Education Subcommittee, to convene an education hearing in New York City to review the impact and effectiveness of recent state education reforms.  The “Regents Reform Agenda: ‘Assessing’ Our Progress” is the fourth of five Senate Education Committee hearings being held throughout the state.

The main focus of these hearings has been to review reforms embarked upon in 2010 by the New York State Board of Regents known as the Regents Reform Agenda.  This agenda was designed to prepare students for college and 21st century careers, close the achievement gap and instill a lifelong love of learning in children.

Please click here for more information from this hearing including testimony and video.

As these reforms are implemented by the Board of Regents, questions and concerns continue to be raised about the impact these changes will have on students throughout the state.  While the reforms were initiated by the Board of Regents, it is critical to Senator Flanagan and the Education Committee that there is a thorough review of the new policies through an open dialogue on the future of state education policy.

Today’s hearing and the previous three meetings were primarily focused on input from parents, educators and education officials about issues including state assessments, New York’s implementation of common core standards, and the protection of student privacy.

“The recent changes to educational policy have raised a significant amount of discussion and it is important that we do a complete review as we move forward.  We need to know which policies are working and which ones may need to be modified.  These hearings are designed to provide parents with the information they deserve and to move the state education system forward in a positive direction for the benefit of our students,” stated Senator Flanagan.

“As a parent and Chair of the New York City Education Subcommittee, I share the concerns about the recent changes in New York State’s education policies and curriculum,” said Senator Felder.  “The Common Core State Standards are an important development, but they address academic standards only.  We also need to look at the entire child – their social and emotional well-being.  We cannot just keep testing our children because we will have thousands – maybe hundreds of thousands – of students who will not prove proficient under these Standards.  We cannot set our children adrift with these new standards, nor set up our kids and teachers for failure.”

The Senate Education Committee will be convening one more hearing as part of the series.  That hearing will be held in Albany at the Legislative Office Building on Wednesday, November 13^th beginning at 10 am.

Members of the public are invited to submit written testimony that will be included in the official record of the hearings.  All testimony can be submitted by clicking here or by emailing it to Senator Flanagan’s office at flanagan@nysenate.gov.

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