COMMON CORE OVERHAUL LONG PAST DUE, SAYS RAIA

Friday December 11 2015 Assemblyman Andrew Raia (R,I,C-East Northport) expressed his encouragement upon hearing the recent recommendations made by the Common Core Task Force. The draft report, which will be reviewed by the governor, calls for a complete overhaul of the flawed education system that was hastily adopted by New York State.

“The momentum for reform has picked up over the past few months, and I am cautiously optimistic that our education system is headed in the right direction,” said Raia. “However, the disastrous implementation of Common Core is what got us here in the first place. After hearing the concerns of students, parents and local districts, my colleagues and I knew that this was a bad deal from the very beginning.”

For the past few years, Raia has been at the forefront of the fight to fix New York’s broken education system. In order to gain insight and a better understanding of the concerns of parents, teachers and students, Raia participated in numerous Common Core forums in which these universal concerns over the curriculum were shared. Resulting from these forums, the comprehensive Achieving Pupil Preparedness & Launching Excellence (APPLE) Plan was introduced. The APPLE Plan calls for a gradual and thorough implementation of a fair and appropriate system that caters to New York’s unique student population.

“I have been out front on this conversation since I first voted against the APPR and ‘Race to the Top’ legislation in 2010, and again two years later,” Raia said. “After years of working alongside hundreds of concerned residents of the Long Island community, there is no doubt that our conference has unwaveringly fought to provide our students with the education that they deserve. Unlike the governor and state education leaders, we have been listening all along.”