SC schools must give end-of-year tests after being denied waiver by federal government
South Carolina school districts will be required to administer students end-of-year assessments after being denied a testing waiver from the federal government, but won’t face penalties if students decline to participate in the tests.
The state Department of Education, which for the second consecutive year had sought a waiver from all federal accountability related testing and reporting requirements due to the coronavirus pandemic, learned over the weekend that its request would not be granted, State Superintendent Molly Spearman said Monday.
A U.S. Department of Education official wrote in the agency’s denial letter that South Carolina’s request had not sufficiently demonstrated how its plan would advance student achievement. It also said the state’s proposal had not described how schools would continue to provide assistance to low-income and low-achieving students, nor how the state would report to parents and the public on student achievement and school performance.
Spearman said she was very disappointed in the U.S. Department of Education’s decision not to grant South Carolina a testing waiver because she felt the interim assessments the state had given students this school year were adequate, if not an improvement on summative assessments.
“I am disappointed that despite submitting a well thought out plan which would have given actionable testing data to educators and families, the Biden administration has denied South Carolina’s testing waiver request,” Spearman said in a statement. “Unfortunately, as so often happens, Washington D.C. thinks they know best and now educators and students will be forced to spend an inordinate amount of time preparing, administering, and taking tests whose results won’t be known for months, when they should be focused closing academic gaps and addressing the social and emotional needs of our students who have had the most stressful academic year ever.”
The Palmetto State Teachers Association, South Carolina’s largest teacher advocacy group, also criticized the Biden administration’s decision, calling it “misguided,” and said the U.S. Department of Education had failed to listen to those who know best what is needed for the state’s students.
“As COVID infection rates are in decline, we should be doing everything possible to increase instructional time and decrease student stress for the remainder of the school year,” the organization said in a statement. “However, our schools will now have to do exactly the opposite in order to administer these spring assessments, even though we know a standardized test taken in atypical times will not provide meaningful comparisons to results from prior tests taken during periods of normalcy.”
While summative testing will be required, the U.S. Department of Education has waived the penalties schools normally face for less than 95% student participation and encouraged the state to reduce the stakes of this year’s assessments by excluding their use in determining final grades, grade promotion decisions, educator evaluations and local school ratings.
If due to safety concerns parents do not wish to send their children to school to take the tests, which must be administered in person, they will not be required to do so.
“No student in South Carolina, no teacher, no school or district will be penalized if they have less than 95% participation,” Spearman said. “We encourage students to participate, for families to participate. However, there will be no penalty for that if they choose not to. It will be a decision left up to that family as to whether they can send their child safely to school for the purpose of taking this test.”
Summative assessment scores, which typically factor into teacher evaluations, will not be used to grade teachers, Education spokesman Ryan Brown said.
Individual districts are required to offer end-of-course tests in Algebra 1, Biology, English 1 and 2, and U.S. History and the Constitution, but have the flexibility to decide whether to count the exams as 20% of a students’ final grade, as is mandated by state statute.
The other end-of-year tests required are the South Carolina College-and Career-Ready Assessments (SC READY) in English language arts and mathematics (grades 3-8) and South Carolina Palmetto Assessment of State Standards (SCPASS) in science (grades 4 and 6). English language proficiency and alternate assessments will also be administered to students who meet the criteria.
All districts must offer the federally mandated end-of-year assessments within the last 30 days of the school year, Spearman said.
She encouraged students to do the best they can on the assessments, but said they shouldn’t worry too much because the tests won’t have the same ramifications they normally do.
“We understand that everyone has been under a tremendous amount of stress this year, and even these assessments sometimes make students and teachers extra nervous because a lot of weight has been put on these assessments,” she said. “You need to know that there will be no school rating based on this assessment this year and it will be used really to help us at the state level to make some determination about where extra assistance should go.”
Education officials had requested permission to substitute the federally mandated testing with a series of benchmark or formative assessments in English language arts and math for all students in kindergarten through ninth grade. Districts already have administered at least two interim assessments this school year and had planned to conduct a third this spring rather than administer the federally required end-of-year tests.
With the federal accountability testing now required, state education officials said a third benchmark test won’t be required, but is still encouraged.
“We’re encouraging them to do that,” Spearman said. “It would give us, particularly for those students who choose not to come in for the summative, we are really encouraging that they give the third interim assessment. Whether or not they give it to the full student body is left up to that local district.”
A study of the interim assessments given earlier this year found significant learning loss among younger students compared to years past. Fourth and fifth graders experienced the greatest losses, both in English language arts and math, according to the study, which mirrored national findings by the NWEA, an academic assessment organization.
Spearman said teachers, who prefer the interim assessments because they provide real time information about how their students are doing, have been using the results of the benchmark tests given in August and December to develop academic interventions for students who had fallen behind to bring them back up to grade level.
This story was originally published March 29, 2021 at 1:40 PM.