ALBANY, N.Y. – The Albany Times Union newspaper has some advice for parents based on recent lessons learned from New York’s changing education system: “Form a union, and then perhaps you can get the state education bureaucracy to listen to you without all of the fuss and bluster of the last year.”

The newspaper is referring to the state Education Department’s reluctance to acknowledge legitimate complaints from parents about the implementation of Common Core national learning standards in the state’s schools.

State education officials, meanwhile, have bent over backwards to accommodate New York union bosses who want to delay a new rigorous teacher license examination that threatens to slow the steady flow of dues paying members into the teaching profession.

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“Union officials who would represent the roughly 16,000 teachers graduating from New York higher education institutions annually approached the state Department of Education with concerns about a harder certification process that was to go into effect this year,” the Times Union wrote in an editorial.

“And, voila, another delay has been granted.”

Would-be educators were actually supposed to start taking the new “bar exam” for teaching last year but Regents (New York’s state board of education) delayed implementation until this year.

As lawmakers in Albany are considering extending that date further to 2015, state Education Commissioner John King presented Regents with another proposal last week that would allow teachers to fail the test and still gain their teaching credentials, the newspaper reports.

That proposal came after King had a little chat with New York State United Teachers President Karen Magee.

The exemption would impact about 20 percent of teachers who failed the first round of tests, which have been piloted by some higher education programs since 2012.

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The testing requires teachers to submit video and written evidence of their ability to lead a classroom. The $300 test is in addition to three other written tests New York requires for teacher certification.

“A handful of higher education deans submitted a letter to the education department wary of the Legislature’s plan to delay, stating, ‘higher standards for our teachers will mean better chances for our students to graduate ready for 21^st-century colleges and careers,’ but acknowledging the (education commissioner’s proposal), which would only extend one year, would allow ‘teacher candidates … to begin teaching and repaying their student loans,’” the Times Union pointed out.

The new teacher bar exam, however, isn’t about student loans or how it will impact the union’s dues revenue. It’s about producing better teachers and better instruction for the state’s students.

That should be the bottom line.

Delaying implementation of the new test not only is a disservice to students across the state who are forced into schools with sub-par teachers, it would set a dangerous precedent for states like Wisconsin, Oregon, and Washington, that are expected to require the same type of test for teacher certification by 2017.