The D-Day invasion at Normandy was postponed because the elements weren’t favorable. But that didn’t mean its participants renounced the liberation of Europe. Rockets have been aborted seconds before takeoff, but that didn’t deter us from a commitment to space exploration. Beethoven ripped up reams of musical sketches but after some corrective action got the notes right and audiences haven’t stopped applauding in 200 years.
Plans of all kinds often need to be changed. That doesn’t mean they were conceived in error.
The Common Core may or not be a sinful enterprise. Many of our finest thinkers and education experts condemn it on numerous grounds that eminently lend themselves to rational justification. There is a groundswell of hostility to it from parents and gathering doubt from the public.
But that’s a different debate from the current focus on how Common Core has been launched. Almost everybody, regardless of how they stand on the Common Core overall, admits its roll-out has been a total disaster.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, and State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, a Republican, jointly called for a moratorium on using the high-stakes Common-Core-aligned tests. That makes compelling sense.
Governor Andrew Cuomo has assembled a panel to get to the root of the problems and sort them out. It’s been suggested that the panel is stacked with fans of the Common Core, but we shall see.
It’s refreshing to see the bi-partisan state government accessible to discourse and hopefully subject to the persuasion of the wisdom of its citizens, for a change.
Ron Isaac
Fresh Meadows
