S.C. preparing to expel PACTs from its schools

By BILL ROBINSON - brobinson@thestate.com

Palmetto Achievement Challenge Tests are on their way out as South Carolina’s method for measuring what elementary and middle school students know.

The state Senate approved legislation Thursday authorizing the state Department of Education to replace PACTs with a new battery of standardized tests.

The last major hurdle appears to be when the new tests will be administered.

The House wants the Education Department to have new tests ready in the spring of 2010. The Senate thinks students should take them next spring. A special committee of lawmakers from both chambers will be assembled to find a compromise.

State schools chief Jim Rex, who last week called on senators to pass the testing change legislation, said his agency prefers to replace PACTs a year from now.

They “should have been replaced some years ago,” he said.

Since their inception in 1999, the annual standardized tests have been criticized by teachers and their principals as offering little detail about a student’s strengths and weaknesses. Since taking office in January 2007, Rex has been their ally and vowed to push for changes.

A bipartisan group of House members agreed and crafted legislation to fine-tune the Education Accountability Act — the template that lays out how student achievement is measured in the state’s 1,100 public schools.

“This is possibly the most important education bill that we will pass in the General Assembly this session,” state Sen. Wes Hayes, R-York, said in a statement after the vote.

About 330,000 students in grades three through eight will still take tests covering math, science, social studies and English/language arts. But plans call for a writing exercise to be administered in March and multiple-choice questions in the four subjects to be administered in May.

That approach will give test-graders more time to gauge students’ writing skills, Rex said, and provide teachers with more information about students. May tests will have more questions that can be graded quickly.

After consulting with colleagues about how the transition to the new test will be handled, state Sen. Greg Ryberg, R-Aiken, dropped objections that blocked a vote on the test-change bill.

“PACT is dead,” Ryberg said in a statement his office put out. “The bill we passed today kills it as of July 1, 2008.”

Reach Robinson at (803) 771-8482.