New York state has been learning hard lessons about creating education policy in a vacuum. I find that the most successful and reasonable education solutions come from educators, school administrators and parents directly.

A few years ago, my colleagues and I in the Assembly Minority Conference held 14 public forums statewide on education. We held those meetings to give the public a voice in the discussion about our children’s future. At the time, former State Education Department (SED) Commissioner John King didn’t want to listen to the public.

I believe some of the best solutions come from listening to the stakeholders. From those meetings, we developed a package of legislative solutions known as the Achieving Pupil Preparedness and Launching Excellence (APPLE) Plan. Just recently, Gov. Cuomo’s Education Task Force recommended similar education reforms. I’m happy that our proposals, along with the suggestions of thousands of parents, teachers, and students are finally being heard.

In fact, a number of solutions we’ve outlined from your suggestions have been either adopted by SED as policy or passed by the legislature. This includes the prevention of SED requiring schools to use PARCC assessments until a comprehensive review of Common Core Standards is considered. I voted to create an independent teacher panel to develop age- and developmentally-appropriate curriculum for our students. We’ve limited the disclosure of student information to those under the direct control of the school district or private school the pupil attends. Something that I also strongly supported was placing an emphasis on our BOCES education programs and creating an alternate pathway in high school by creating a Career and Technical Education Diploma.

Public education should be, fundamentally, a vehicle in which each student’s personal gifts and talents are harnessed to prepare them to be contributing and functioning adults when they leave high school. The poor roll out of New York’s Common Core Standards lost sight of that principle.

Going forward, there is still much to do to improve our children’s education, like improving funding equity among our schools and structuring an education system that is responsive and effective at teaching our children. I look forward to hearing your suggestions on how to best improve our state’s education system and voicing them in Albany this coming session.

To learn more about the findings from our task force hearings on education, please visit tinyurl.com/educationalcrossroads. If you have thoughts or comments on this or any legislative topic, please email me at blankenbushk@assembly.state.ny.us or call my office at 493-3909.