CHARLESTON, W.Va. — All of West Virginia’s next generation education standards will be available for the public to read online beginning Wednesday, July 8.
“This is our attempt, and my direct attempt, to get that feedback and make our standards strong for our students so that we can move our educational system forward to ensure young people get a great education in West Virginia,” said State Superintendent Dr. Michael Martirano during an interview with the MetroNews-affiliated “The Mike Queen Show” on the AJR News Network.
Dr. Martirano hopes that this act of transparency, which he’s calling a state-wide town hall, will help alleviate concerns about the standards.
“Regardless of whether they are Common Core or Next Gen, what I want individuals in our state to understand–our educational community and all of our citizens–is that we need to have solid standards for our young people.”
Dr. Martirano said Next Gen standards will focus on helping students in West Virginia move on to college and careers afterwards. According to Dr. Martirano, these standards have already shown improvement over older standards–citing West Virginia’s low rankings in Language Arts under the old standards.
“I need to ensure as the Chief Academic Officer of our state that there are standards that are going to prepare young people for careers and college,” he said.
When asked about comments made by Common Core critic Dr. Sandra Stotsky, Dr. Martirano expressed that he is open-minded, but disagrees with many of the comments Dr. Stotsky has made.
“I definitely disagree with some of the comments that she’s made because our standards need to make certain that they’re strong for our children in West Virginia to prepare them for college and careers,” he said.
Test results under the Next Gen standards are expected back in August, and Dr. Martirano hopes those results will play a pivotal role in continuing to guide positive change for school systems in the state.
“We talk about multiple measures,” he said. “It’s not just one test result, but a variety of different results that will be used to improve the delivery of young people. This is all student-centered to help young people learn.”