NY State ELA/Literacy Standards: Public Comment

New York State has recently revised its education standards and they are currently open for public comment through November 4, 2016. While most of the changes to the ELA/Literacy Standards are minimal (word changes, clarifications, etc.), they have suggested one particular theme of changes that threatens to undermine the high expectations embodied by the Standards.

Text complexity – which underlies all the Standards – has a severely diminished role in the revised Standards. Under Common Core, text complexity had its own section and its own standards. Under the revision, that section has been removed and references to text complexity have been limited, watered down, or eliminated completely.

We urge you to take a few short minutes to weigh in during the public comment period and explain why you oppose these changes and the lowering of expectations for New York students.

To provide feedback:

1. Visit the New York State Department of Education standards comment page
2. Review a side-by-side comparison of Common Core and the revised standards for your grade level.
3. Look at Reading Standard 10 (e.g. 4.R.10) and note how this standard will be removed if these revisions go forward. Search (Ctrl F or Command F) for the term “text complexity” to see exactly which standards related to text complexity have been removed or altered in your grade.
4. Complete a short grade-specific survey explaining what changes (make sure to reference specific standards code numbers) you find problematic and why.

Here are some points you may want to address in your grade-specific feedback:

• The text complexity standards were an integral part of the Common Core because it is an expectation that students read grade-level text in order to be considered college- and career-ready. Removing this expectation from the standards themselves and relegating it to introductory guidance (i.e. not mandated), undermines this message.
• The revision overview claims that text complexity was moved to the introduction (the exact language has not been shared to-date) to “underscore its importance” however because it is merely guidance and not a mandated standard, many educators may no longer adhere to it.
• Revisions changing “grade-level text” to “a variety of text levels” allow teachers to meet the standards without requiring students to read grade-appropriate complex text.
• If complexity is not a standard, it means students can demonstrate mastery of any other standard with text at any complexity level. A 6^th grader, for example, can be deemed proficient if addressing standards using a text written at a third grade level.
• Using ‘just-right’ leveled texts in place of grade-appropriate complex text has been shown to negatively affect students and impede them from ever gaining proficiency.

New York State was an early leader in Common Core implementation and how they choose to revise their standards may influence what happens in other states. Please take just a few minutes to weigh in and protect text complexity in the revised New York standards.