The Assembly has already passed legislation to ban state standardized testing for students in kindergarten through second grade. In addition, the Assembly Education Committee held a hearing in November and has passed two bills to protect student data privacy.

We are pleased to see the Senate also views these as important issues and hope the Senate will pass these bills when they return in January. The State Education Department has been conducting public forums, in cooperation with Assemblymembers, which have clearly shown there are legitimate concerns regarding Common Core implementation, privacy and testing.

We look forward to working with parents, school boards, supterintendents, principals, teachers, advocates and our partners in state government to ensure these new standards carefully consider all of these concerns and make adjustments quickly to respond to them.