Essay: Recover New York's 'lost standards'

Since becoming the Republican candidate for governor, I've been called "pathetic," "ignorant," "preposterous" and "shameless." Not by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (he's been calling me much worse in his TV attack ads). These names are coming from some of the high-profile supporters of the Common Core educational standards who are attacking my opposition to them.

I wonder how many of the people attacking me have children in school dealing with the Common Core. Cuomo's girls are out of school. The children of Bill Gates (he gave $200 million for the creation and adoption of Common Core) go to an elite private school that doesn't adhere to the Common Core; same goes for the children of John King, New York's commissioner of education. It's easy for someone to say, "Put your kids in this untested experiment," when their kids aren't subjected to it. They certainly have a right to their opinion, and so do I.

As a former school board member, husband of a special education teacher, father who has spent countless hours helping my kids with their homework, and candidate for governor who has spoken to hundreds of parents and educators, here is why I oppose Common Core:

• The standards are experimental, conceived in secrecy with no public hearings on the draft standards, and never tested.

• Few K-12 teachers were involved in writing the standards.

• It is considered by many to be developmentally inappropriate in the early grades and not based on well-researched child development knowledge.

• It is education guided at the federal level — not the state and local level.

• It actually lowers standards, according to many experts.

As governor, I'll scrap the Common Core, as other states are now doing, but I won't settle for the status quo. We'll pursue the best educational standards in the nation for all of our children.

That's what a team of New York educators, led by a former member of the Board of Regents, Saul Cohen, was doing from 2008 to 2010. They were well underway in developing the nation's best standards when, according to Cohen, the state "grabbed the (federal) money" and "tossed out all of the work we had done." He adds, "I was very upset, because the national standards weren't as good. Now we have this mess."

The "lost standards" were infinitely better than Common Core. The process was very transparent, with public forums and vast feedback from teachers and parents. The standards were high, but developmentally appropriate. They relied on multiple methods of measuring student progress — not just standardized testing. And many educational decisions were left to local school districts.

It's the model the state will pursue when I'm governor, after we get rid of Common Core.

Astorino is a Republican candidate for governor of New York.