ALBANY, NY — With an estimated 20% of parents of school children grades three to eight choosing not to allow their kids to take the Common Core (CC) tests in the last school year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has decided that the implementation of CC has been “deeply flawed,” and said that in September he will appoint a committee to review the program and recommend changes.

He issued a statement that said, “The fact is that the current Common Core program in New York is not working, and must be fixed. To that end, the time has come for a comprehensive review of the implementation of the Common Core Standards, curriculum, guidance and tests in order to address local concerns. I am taking this action not because I don’t believe in standards, but because I do.”

This comes as the new commissioner of education, Mary Ellen Elia, has been looking at the possibility of imposing some sort of legal sanctions against parents who keep their children away from the tests. Elia had made public comments in various venues saying that it was not reasonable for parents to prevent their children from being tested and that it was not ethical for teachers to promote the “opt out” stand, though she admitted she was not aware of actual cases where that has happened.

With his announcement, Cuomo has pre-empted Elia from moving toward some form of sanction. He said, “The new commissioner of education has inherited this problem, and I understand has been meeting with parents, educators and students, and has heard the same concerns. Recently, the state education department has made comments about organized efforts to have parents choose to opt out of standardized tests. While I understand the issue and [the education department’s] valid concern, I sympathize with the frustration of the parents.

“We must have standards for New York’s students, but those standards will only work if people—especially parents—have faith in them and in their ability to educate our children. The current Common Core program does not do that. It must.”

He said he would instruct the committee that reviews the system to have recommendations in time for him to include them in his State of the State Address in January. He’s looking to have the legislature pass a new law regarding Commob Core.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, which has been critical of CC, reacted positively to the statement, issued the following statement in response: He said, “Gov. Cuomo has started listening to teachers and parents who know firsthand how flawed the implementation of the Common Core has been in New York State. We’ll be happy to work with the new group to help fix the problems created by the Common Core rollout and to help restore the public’s faith in state education policy.”

Other critics, however, said a review of the system will not do, and that CC needs to be completely abandoned. The group New York State Allies for Public Education released a statement that said, in part, “Parents across the state are not fools. They know the problems are hardly limited to implementation of the Common Core, but the actual Common Core itself, its excessive testing and a fundamentally broken teacher-evaluation system.

“Parents know that Andrew Cuomo is not part of the solution. Cuomo is the problem.

“It is Cuomo who forced his unproven teacher evaluation system down parents’ throats.

“It is Cuomo who slashed and underfunded the state education department staffing.

“It is Cuomo who accepted ‘Big Donor’ campaign money and enabled the build-up of a privatized, unaccountable shadow government within the state education department—The Regents Research Fellows—who created the ‘implementation’ mess Cuomo now blames.”