General Assembly votes to cut K-12 testing
The N.C. legislature voted Monday night to do away with some 20 tests, and to force local school systems to take a harder look at their individual testing protocols.
Senate Bill 621 tinkers mostly with high school testing schedules, doing away with all N.C. Final Exams, which are tests given in courses that don't have End of Grade or End of Course tests.
The bill also orders school districts to review their local testing requirements and report them to the state every two years. If they're over the state average for student testing hours, they'll have to submit a plan to get back in line with that average.
The bill cleared the state Senate unanimously Monday night and the House on a vote of 105-12. It heads to Gov. Roy Cooper for his signature.
The bill also forbids school systems from requiring students to do graduatoin projects, unless the system will reimburse disadvantaged students up to $75 to cover expenses.
An older version of this bill would have gone further on testing, eliminating End of Course tests in high school and letting the ACT or another national standardized test stand in for those results.
That version also would have replaced each of the End of Grade tests given now at the end of third through eighth grades with three shorter "check-in" tests during the school year.
