North Carolina school kids, parents and teachers exasperated by “over-testing” got some good news last week, thanks to a rare moment of bipartisanship in the N.C. Legislature.
Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, signed legislation Sept. 5 that the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed last month designed to cut down on excessive testing.
Starting next school year, the Testing Reduction Act will eliminate more than 20 End-of-Course exams in 29 classes ranging from social studies in fourth grade through the eighth grade, to pre-calculus and American history in high schools.
State law doesn’t require these “North Carolina Final Exams,” which had been used to comply with previous federal mandates.
The law directs school systems to review local testing requirements periodically and reduce them if they exceed the statewide average. It also prevents school systems from requiring students to do a “high school graduation project” unless they provide needy students with up to $75 for project expenses.
The state will also begin a five-year study of the N.C. Personalized Assessment Tool. It would replace long end-of-grade exams in reading and math for students in grades three through eight with shorter tests in each subject throughout the school year, the Raleigh News & Observer reported.
Gov. Cooper signed the measure after it unanimously passed the Senate and cleared the House in a 105-12 vote last month.
“North Carolina needs to be able to assess how our schools are performing and how well students are learning,” he said. “A reasonable assessment system that gives teachers and parents accurate information without sacrificing accountability should help children learn without over-testing.”
State education officials also last week released 2018/19 accountability results for every public school. These can be seen at www.ncpublicschools.org/accountability/reporting/.
Those results show some positives, but also that there remains plenty of work to be done.
Many educators chafe at reducing all the factors that go into school performance into a single letter grade. While letter grades may oversimplify and fail to account for all the challenges schools face, they do provide a snapshot for parents to see how schools are performing in relation to past performance and other schools.
The state will release detailed School Report Cards in November, including data on academic performance by grade level and subject.
— The Times-News of Hendersonville