By JIMMY LAWTON

St. Lawrence-Lewis County BOCES Superintendent Tom Burns says St. Lawrence County shouldn’t expect any big changes in the wake of the president’s call for reduced testing time in the classrooms.

Burns says New York State has already imposed a 1 percent cap on standardized testing time at public schools. Based on a 180-day school year with the average class of about 40 minutes, that would allow for about 72 minutes of standardized testing per class, per year, at the high school level.

The new federal standard would be double that amount.

“The U.S. Department of State is setting a cap of about 2 percent or less of instructional time should be spent on standardized testing,” he said. “New York State has already put into place a cap to keep standardized testing under 1 percent. For us, it’s sort of been there, done that.”

The president’s announcement coincided with news that long-time Education Secretary Arne Duncan would be stepping down. John B. King Jr., who formerly served as New York State Commissioner of Education during the implementation of the often-criticized Common Core standards and teacher evaluations, will replace Duncan.

Burns says he doesn’t expect much in the way of changes at the federal level, especially with change in Republican with Paul Ryan replacing John Boehner as House speaker. He said things are also changing fast at the state level.

“We are in kind of a time of limbo. Lots of things are changing. Just this week alone the chancellor of Board of Regents announced she will be stepping down at the end of the year, and the governor named anew deputy secretary. So things are changing by the week and really by the day right now, so it’s difficult to predict what’s going to happen,” he said.

Despite the changes at the state and federal levels, Burns says he believes state legislators will continue to be active on education issues.

He said he expects the Gap Elimination Adjustment will finally be ended in the next budget, which is a good start toward getting rural schools the aid they need.

Burns said locally he expects educators and stakeholders will continue to call for a more equitable state aid formula.

“I think in New York and in St. Lawrence County we are ahead of the game. We have already made a leap toward more student centered, less teacher directed instruction, kids are more engaged, more in control of their own learning,” he said,

Burns said that despite the opposition to common core standards, St. Lawrence County, as a whole, has seen improvement in math scores. He said St. Lawrence County schools have been very active in professional development in that area and expects local districts will now be focusing on doing the same with English and language arts.

“I think we are to a point now where we are getting more comfortable,” he said.