A name change for Common Core in NY?

The Common Core may be getting a re-branding in New York.

Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said Tuesday that the state is “toying with” a possible name change for a revamped Common Core, the set of more-stringent education standards that has sparked often-contentious debate in school districts across New York.

In an interview with public radio’s “The Capitol Pressroom,” Tisch said the name of the standards is among the things being discussed by the state Education Department as it reviews the Common Core under new Commissioner MaryEllen Elia.

The potential name change wouldn’t simply be a new brand for the existing Common Core standards, Tisch said. Instead, it would be coupled with more-substantive, New York-specific adjustments resulting from the state Education Department’s review.

“There is so much politicization about those words – ‘Common Core,’” Tisch said. “So we can call them the Empire State Standards, or New York’s Higher Standards. If you call them something different and you make appropriate adjustments addressing some developmental questions, I think those are all appropriate things to do.”

Both the Education Department and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have promised a review of the standards, with Cuomo tasking members of his education commission to come up with fixes to the Common Core before his State of the State address in January.

Tisch said there are areas of the standards that are ripe for adjustment, including the grade-level appropriateness of the benchmarks for students in kindergarten through second grade.

Other states, Tisch said, have made similar re-branding efforts after making state-specific changes to the Common Core program.

“Other states have reviewed these Common Core standards, and here is more or less what’s happened: They have tweaked in a couple of areas, but they haven’t changed them,” she said. “What they did do, however, is they changed the name of them.”

She made clear, however, that she’s not backing off the need in higher standards in New York and warned others against doing so. But Tisch said she’s open to adjustments as the state assesses what works and what’s not working.

“Remember, when we started this whole effort in 2008, we were getting national tests where 30 percent of New York state’s kids were proficient, yet on our state tests 90 percent of them were proficient,” Tisch said. “We were getting remediation rates at our community colleges over 80 percent. So we knew there was a problem.”

She continued: “You can either bury your head in the sand or choose to rip the band-aid off and move forward.”