Preliminary plan for NY education reform released

Last April, Governor Cuomo created the New NY Education Reform Commission in order to collect recommendations for future reform efforts. The group consists of nationally recognized education, community, and business leaders. The Commission has held public hearings in each of the 10 regions of New York State over the past 7 months, during which over 300 students, parents, teachers, and other stakeholders voiced their opinion.

On Wednesday, Governor Cuomo received the Preliminary Education Action Plan from the Commission, describing recommendations that span pre-kindergarten through college and career readiness. The Commission has made 8 recommendations:

1. Provide high quality full-day pre-kindergarten for our most at-risk students;
2. Create statewide models for “Community Schools” that use schools as a community hub to improve access to public, non-profit, and private services/resources, like health and social services, for students and their families;
3. Transform and extend the school day and year to expand quality learning time for students, especially in underserved communities;
4. Improve the teacher and principal pipeline to recruit and retain the most effective educators;
5. Build better bridges from high school to college and careers with early college high schools and career technical education;
6. Utilize all available classroom technologies to empower educators to meet the needs of a diverse student population and engage students as active participants in their own learning;
7. Pursue efficiencies such as district consolidation, high school regionalization and shared services to increase student access to educational opportunities; and
8. Increase transparency and accountability of district leadership by creating a performance management system.

Click here to see the report in its entirety.

While the Governor has noted that this is a good start, the Commission recognizes there is much more work to be done. A Final Action Plan is expected to be done in Fall 2013. Until then, the Commission will continue to solicit recommendations from experts and education stakeholders throughout New York.

Click here to learn more about the New NY Education Reform Commission and submit ideas.

Teachers, what are your thoughts about the recommendations?

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