It’s the end of the year, and the beginning of a new one. So we thought we'd take a look at some hot topics from 2011, as well as an outlook for 2012. Vince Gallagher reports.

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We caught up with state Education Commissioner John King for a little insight. First on the list of discussion: funding of the January state regents exams. For the past year, they were funded through private donations, but this year it's a little different.

" We very much hope we won't have to go back to private situations again...the folks who gave us the gift for this year said it was a onetime effort to help the state, but next year we really need the state to come through to cover those costs," said John King, NYS Education Commissioner.

There are also new test assessments on grades three through eight

"We've changed the score you need to get in order to be labeled proficient to match college and career readiness, that's a significant change...we've added more writing to the test, we're always trying to think how we can take the test the most useful for student performance and also inform our instruction going forward,” said King.

And then there's the No Child Left Behind Act. As it is right now, a waiver is being worked on to look into more than just the student performance side of things

"To not only look into school absolute performance for accountability, but also growth, and whether or not they're making progress with students,” said King.

But these days, you can't talk about the future of education without these other current topics: economy and employment. When it comes to New York State schools, there's more to budget than just time in class

"Everyone's hurting and it's going to take a while and that's why it's so critical, especially with the budget vote coming up in May that we realize that education is an extremely important part of our future of our state economy," said Maria Neira, NYSUT Vice President.

According to education officials from across the state, the economy and teacher layoffs were near the top of the list for hot topics for 2012.

Other subject areas to take note of in the near future: the diminishing importance of SAT scores and public versus private schools.