Gov. Andrew Cuomo has named the members of a panel that he has asked to advise him about the way the state is implementing the Common Core standards.
The 11 panel members include state legislators, educators from New York City and upstate, an upstate parent, business leaders, and advocates. Linda Darling-Hammond, the Stanford University education professor who advised President Barack Obama on education, is also on the panel.
Cuomo announced in his budget address in January that he would convene the panel, after remaining silent for months amid growing concerns about the state’s rollout of the new standards. Parents and educators from across the state have said schools did not get enough time or support to adjust to the standards before being held accountable for having students meet them.
The panel’s work gained new significance this week when legislators — including the two on the panel — called for the state to untie Common Core test scores from teacher evaluations for at least two years. Darling-Hammond has supported Common Core testing but criticized using test scores to measure individual teachers.
“It would be premature to consider any moratorium before the panel is allowed to do its work,” Cuomo said in response.
The panel will deliver recommendations before the end of the legislative session this spring, according to Cuomo’s office.
The full list of panel members is below:
- Stanley S. Litow, Vice President, IBM Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs & President, IBM International Foundation (Chair)
- Senator John Flanagan, Senate Education Committee Chair (Senate appointee)
- Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, Assembly Education Committee Chair (Assembly appointee)
- Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Stanford University Graduate School of Education
- Todd Hathaway, Teacher, East Aurora High School (Erie County)
- Alice Jackson-Jolley, Parent (Westchester County)
- Anne Kress, President, Monroe Community College
- Nick Lawrence, Teacher, East Bronx Academy for the Future (NYC)
- Delia Pompa, Senior Vice President of Programs, National Council of La Raza
- Charles Russo, Superintendent, East Moriches UFSD (Long Island)
- Dan Weisberg, EVP & General Counsel, The New Teacher Project
Lawrence, the UFT lead teacher at his school, wrote last year about his experience with New York City’s teacher evaluation rules for Chalkbeat’s First Person section.