Last week, the state Legislature met in joint session to elect four members to the state Board of Regents. The Board of Regents is responsible for the general supervision of all educational activities within New York State, including the implementation of educational standards such as the much-maligned Common Core standards. The Board consists of 17 members, one elected to represent each of the state's 13 judicial districts and four at-large members. Each member serves a five-year term, and the members' terms are staggered.

The process for electing Regents is unique in that each state legislator gets one vote. Because there are 213 legislators, in order to get elected, a Regent needs 107 votes. Currently, in the Legislature, there are 131 Majority members and 70 Minority members with 12 open seats. As one can see, because of the larger number of members in the Majority, if united, they would control who is elected to the Board of Regents. In the past, the Majority has remained united and, accordingly, the election of a Regent was a foregone conclusion.

However, this year, due to the tremendous unpopularity of the Common Core standards in our schools, there was a real question as to whether the Majority would remain unified and re-nominate and reelect the incumbent Regents. Indeed, one of the incumbent Regents, at the last minute, decided not to run. It was reported that this Regent decided not to run out of concern of his ability to be reelected.

For our part, the majority of the Minority in the Legislature understood that the implementation of the Common Core standards has been badly fumbled by the State Education Department (which is overseen by the Board of Regents) and that changes are needed. Accordingly, we nominated a number of reform-minded candidates that hopefully would have, if elected, placed more urgency on changing the Common Core and its implementation. Unfortunately, the Majority, for the most part, remained united and voted to keep the status quo by reelecting the three incumbent Regents and one new Regent who has little educational background.

While this was a missed opportunity to bring reform to the Board of Regents, I am pleased that there has been a recognition by some in Albany that the Common Core and its implementation need to be improved. First, in February, the Board of Regents itself announced it would make changes to the Common Core by putting a five-year delay on the Common Core-aligned Regents diploma; the first class tasked to graduate under the new standards will be the class of 2022. Previously, today's ninth graders (Class of 2017) were set to graduate with a Common Core diploma.

Second, this month, the Assembly did pass legislation that, if enacted, would also reform the Common Core program. This legislation calls for delaying tying teacher evaluations to student performance until 2015-16. It also would prohibit the State Education Department from sharing student data with third-party vendors, such as inBloom, until 2015. Finally, the bill would prohibit school districts from making any student promotion or placement decision based solely on Common Core-aligned state tests.

In all, this is a good start, but we should go further and implement a three-year moratorium on Common Core in order to examine what works and what doesn't. A moratorium would allow education experts, parents and communities the chance to weigh in on this implementation. Everyone is for higher standards, but the higher standards should be fairly implemented with considered input from all stakeholders, not by fiat from above.

If you have any questions or comments, or if you would like to be added to my mailing list or receive my newsletter, please contact my office by mail at 200 North Second Street, Fulton, New York 13069, by e-mail at barclaw@assembly.state.ny.us or by calling (315) 598-5185.