There didn’t seem to be much disagreement that South Carolina’s current end-of-the-year tests, which are given to students in the third through the eighth grade, should be replaced.
Both the House and the Senate have approved the changes, and the governor is expected to sign the bill.
The current one, called the Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test, would be replaced by tests that would allow results to be reported earlier and be more user friendly.
According to the legislation, the new test would:
-- Have a multiple-choice portion to be taken near the end of the school year. The writing portion, which takes longer to grade, would be taken months earlier.
-- Summarize the information sent to parents in the state’s annual report cards for schools and districts. Parents would receive two pages, rather than up to eight, for each, in an effort to make the reports more understandable.
-- Change students’ scoring levels to “exemplary,” “met” and “not met,” and set “met” as on grade level for federal proficiency standards. Currently, students are judged as “below basic,” “basic,” “proficient” and “advanced.”
-- Change the label of schools’ bottom performance category from “unsatisfactory” to a “school at risk.”
-- Delete the requirement that teachers create academic plans at the beginning of the school year for students who score in the bottom tier.
-- Require the Education Oversight Committee to review the state’s accountability system every five years.
The criticism of the current test has been that the results don’t come until after school is already out for the summer and the feedback doesn’t give teachers and students information on where they need help or where they are doing well.
According to an Associated Press story, State Department of Education Superintendent Jim Rex said he welcomes the changes because the tests will be “more user-friendly for teachers and parents, without lessening the state’s education standards that various reports have ranked as among the nation’s toughest.”
“Teachers and parents are clamoring for these changes. Our students need them, and our state deserves them,” Rex told the AP.
The consensus seems to be it will help us move forward in education, and that’s certainly what we need.
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