When Will Schools Be Back to Normal? It May Be a While PUBLISHED 5:02 PM ET Feb. 23, 2021 PUBLISHED 5:02 PM EST Feb. 23, 2021
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Reopening schools could take longer than policymakers and elected officials would like as the COVID-19 vaccine slowly trickles out amid safety concerns raised by the teachers union.
Governor Andrew Cuomo has tied the broader reopening of the economy to ensuring kids are back in classrooms, noting education is one of the many facets in which the pandemic has laid bare social and economic inequities. You re not going to reopen the economy without parents having children in school so parents can go on with their life and work, Cuomo said last week.
The state Education Department is taking steps to cancel third- through eighth-grade testing this spring.
The department has drafted requests for waivers to the U.S. Department of Education. The first waiver request seeks to waive state testing requirements at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. The waiver would also allow the state Education Department to administer the state English as a Second Language Achievement Test (NYSELSAT) only to those English Language Learners who are able to attend school in person at least some days of the week.
The second waiver request seeks to eliminate the requirement to assign a Level 1 to 4 to each accountability subgroup for each indicator for which a school or district is accountable or identify schools for improvement in fall 2021 based on 2020-21 school year results. Separate from the waiver, the state Education Department will seek an amendment to New York’s approved ESSA plan that would allow certain schools that are current