The governor’s Common Core Task Force is recommending a total overhaul of the state education system and delaying the impact of testing on students and teachers until at least 2019, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

“The Task Force recommends overhauling the current Common Core system and adopting new, locally-driven New York State standards in a transparent and open process,” Cuomo said.

The new standards, curriculum and tests and must uniquely developed for New York students with sufficient local input. The task force also recommends that current Common Core aligned tests should not count for students or teachers until the start of 2019-2020 school year to ensure the system is implemented completely and properly, according to Cuomo.

The task force heard from more than 2,100 students, parents, teachers, administrators and other education stakeholders through public forums held across the state, thousands of pages of testimony and outreach to educators, Cuomo said.

Over the past decade there has been rapid change in education, including the 2009 federal Race to the Top and Common Core which has created confusion and disruption in states across the nation, including New York, according to Cuomo. Moreover, the original process to adopt and implement the Common Core standards, curriculum and tests in New York had implementation issues and failed to include sufficient input from educators, parents and local districts and was not open and transparent, Cuomo said.

Cuomo said among the task force’s 21 recommendations were:

• Overhauling the Common Core and adopting locally-driven high quality New York education standards with input from local districts, educators, and parents through a transparent and open process that are age-appropriate and allow educators flexibility for students with disabilities and English language learners.

• Establishing a transparent and open process by which New York standards are periodically reviewed by educators and content area experts, since educators know their schools and students best.

• Providing educators and local school districts with the flexibility to develop and tailor curriculum to meet the needs of their individual students and requiring the State to create and release new and improved curriculum resources that educators can then adapt to meet the needs of their individual students.

• Engaging New York educators, not a private corporation, to drive the review and creation of State standards-aligned tests in an open and transparent manner.

• Minimizing student testing anxiety by reducing the number of test days and test questions and providing ongoing test transparency to parents, teachers and districts on test questions and student test scores.

• Ensuring that state tests account for different types of learners, including students with disabilities and English language learners.

“The task force found that to implement the new system would require significant work including a comprehensive review of the current Common Core Standards in order to adopt new New York state standards and create new curriculum and assessments in an open and transparent manner for the nearly 700 school districts, 5,000 schools, 200,000 plus teachers and 2.65 million students.

Therefore, the Task Force believes that in order to finally get the system right there must be adequate time to implement the system. Given all of the work and time required to review and adopt new standards, improve and adapt curriculum, and create new assessments, any current Common Core aligned tests should not count for students or teachers until the start of 2019-2020 school year when the new statewide standards developed through this process will be put into place.