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State Superintendent Barge Still A Common Core Supporter

September 17th, 2013

Georgia state superintendent John Barge says he has not changed his stance on the effectiveness of the state’s adopted Common Core standards.

Those standards are supposed to provide an objective benchmark for planning curriculum, setting expectations, and measuring student progress.

But as WABE’s Rose Scott reports, Barge is also depending on feedback about Common Core standards in case some tweaking needs to occur.

John Barge says whether he’s operating as the state superintendent or gubernatorial candidate, right now his position on Common Core is the same.

“I am not about to turn around one more time and tell teachers we’re changing our curriculum”

But last week, on his campaign website, Barge stated that he wished the state would have remained with the old Georgia Performance Standards rather than changing them for the second time in a few short years.

Now three years later and in full implementation, Barge says don’t read into that as backing away from Common Core, three years after it was adopted.

“However, what we are doing, as we do with any major initiative like this with any curriculum or any new program. You always get feedback after implementation after a period of time to ask the people who are implementing what’s going well, are there adjustments that need to be made.”

And that feedback will come from teachers, says Barge.

“That’s where the rubber meets the road. They’re the ones who are implementing the standards. They’re the ones that know better than anyone how students are responding.”

The state is enlisting the Regional Education Service Agency to collect the feedback.

Barge says he would like for those responses to be gathered by the end of the month.

And if there are adjustments to be made Barge says, that’s what will happen.