CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state Department of Education has received over 250,000 comments from more than 4,000 West Virginia K-12 teachers, administrators faculty members and parents about the Next Generation teaching standards, also called Common Core. 
The department launched its Academic Spotlight comment website earlier this year after lawmakers tried to eliminate the learning requirements. Of those comments, 84.21 percent came from educators, 5.12 percent came from parents, 4.29 percent was from administrators and the last 6.09 percent were from others.
The most comments received were from Kanawha, Greenbrier, Mercer and Berkley counties.
MORE: See breakdown of comments
The analysis is broken down into math and English language arts categories. Of the 72,301 comments received from the math portion, 68,396 agreed with the those teaching standards and 3,903 disagreed. Of the 179,130 comments received from the ELA portion, 173,341 agreed with the standards and 5,789 disagreed.
The 2,922 comments on the math portion say the standards should be moved, 749 say they should be rewritten and 270 say they should be broken. The 4,275 comments on the ELA portion say they should be moved, 1,133 say they should be rewritten and 413 say they should be broken.
Kristin Anderson, the communications director for the state DOE, told MetroNews they can now use the comments to help build on the Common Core standards.
“We’re really pleased with the feedback received and we’re just in the stage now of compiling all that feedback, boiling it down and seeing where we really need to focus on strengthening the standards,” said Anderson.
Anderson said the state Board of Education plan to look over the comments, so they can decide what changes need to be made.
“They’ve going to look the Department of Education at the November board meeting to make a recommendation on if the standards need changed and if so, exactly which areas need changed,” she said.
State School Superintendent Dr. Michael Martirano has spent a lot of time in recent months trying to explain the differences between the standards and the curriculum during the controversy taking place in West Virginia. He’s also reassuring parents that their child’s personal information will not fall into the wrong hands.
The Legislature unsuccessfully attempted to repeal Common Core during the 2015 Regular Legislative Session, but there have been indications lawmakers will revisit the issue in 2016.