So Governor Andrew M. Cuomo launched a Common Core Task Force to look into what didn't go so well with the state's roll out of the new national standards last year.

"A diverse and highly-qualified group of education officials, teachers, parents, and state representatives from across New York that is charged with comprehensively reviewing and making recommendations to overhaul the current Common Core system and the way we test our students," ran the big pitch line. "With that in mind, the Governor has charged the Task Force to: 1. Review and reform the Common Core State Standards; 2. Review New York State's curriculum guidance and resources; 3. Develop a process to ensure tests fit curricula and standards; 4. Examine the impact of the current moratorium on recording Common Core test scores on student records, and make a recommendation as to whether it should be extended; 5. Examine how the State and local districts can reduce both the quantity and duration of student tests, and develop a plan whereby districts include parents in reviewing local tests being administered to analyze those tests' purpose and usefulness; and 6. Review the quality of the tests to ensure competence and professionalism from the private company creating and supplying the tests."

There's a website and results are promised by the end of the coming year. Members of the council include some business people, some actual teachers, quite a few education administrators, and representatives from top teachers' unions.

Sounds like a lot of fun, eh? Long discussions, with bullet point lists appearing and disappearing, on methodologies and reasoning. Plus room for some big battles!

What's our view about all this?

Well, we've heard all about entire grades failing their tests this past year, and what that did for morale. We've paid attention to all the talk about how the younger students will gradually get used to the new standards and protocols, and hence getter better at their testing as time goes on. And then there's those who still want to see how particular teachers rate, and what can be done about them. And that includes what they get paid, with agendas reaching into the scary idea of paying people based on new levels of reward (as if those in our top pay tiers get paid in such ways!)

We also discovered how our kid, moving between the lower grades, got lost by the new system, even though he's been testing okay (albeit not quite at the levels we're all wanting and not achieving much yet). He started to feel like he was bad, headed for a criminal life, in need of constant detention. He stopped wanting to go to school. So we shifted to a different system where he's "free" to do what he wants without testing or homework. And "accidentally" all excited about education again, albeit not in the formats the curriculum he left wants. And reading better than ever. And doing his math on his own.

Bad kid? Not ready for college or a career path? Hey, he's not yet ten and we all know how one CAN catch up and reeducate oneself when motivated. And he's gotten confident again, which seems to us, as his parents, like a truly great motivator.

Does this mean we don't agree with Common Core now, which we've defended, along with its tests, in the past? No... we still like the idea of standards, but NOT as a means of measurement that includes punishments to either students or teachers... or schools for that matter. We like curricula, but also a reminder that one can veer off course and still get back on later in life. It's a long way to college, and even further to one's final "real" career. Maturing involves many criteria, not all tied to endless work and discipline.

We hope such considerations get brought up in the Task Force's discussions, and not just big picture quantifications and theorizing. An ability to match education to student, and school to community, is a key element of both learning and living. It's a difficult hat trick to achieve, but worth fighting for. Even if it means some failures, and a bit more slack.