Georgia school chief explains Common Core test retreat: We... | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com

Georgia school chief explains Common Core test retreat: We... | Get Schooled | www.ajc.com:

Georgia school chief explains Common Core test retreat: We couldn't afford it. We will have similar test. 

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JOHNNY CRAWFORD / JCRAWFORD@AJC.

State School Superintendent Dr. John Barge listens to questions about Common Core on Wednesday, June 10, 2013 in Fayeville.

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By Maureen Downey

I asked Georgia state school Superintendent John Barge to explain the decision this week to withdraw from the 22-state consortium creating the new test for the Common Core State Standards. I also sent him questions from readers of the Get Schooled blog. He has addressed them in this column.

By Dr. John Barge

Last week, Georgia formally withdrew from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) consortium in order to pursue better options for our state.

Some have asked if this is a retreat from our standards or from a rigorous test to measure how well our students are performing and the answer to that is, absolutely not.

This is not a suspension of our current rigorous college and career ready standards in English language arts and math and the tests we develop will be more rigorous than we have ever seen. Without a doubt, the landscape for assessments in our state is changing.

 While Georgia will be pursuing other options for developing its own state assessments in English