Standardized Testing Waived for Rest of School Year
The Alabama Department of Education has been approved for a waiver to waive standardized testing. This comes in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alabama State Superintendent Dr. Eric Mackey made the announcement earlier Friday afternoon confirming that the U.S. Department of Education and President Trump had approved a waiver for the state’s schools during this COVID-19 pandemic.
Mackey says the waiver means Alabama won’t have to give any more state assessments or standardized tests to students for the rest of the school year once school systems reopen. He says this is great news for the schools relieving a burden off of educators.
“How this is really good news for our schools is this is the time of year, not only would they be administering these assessments beginning on schedule, they would have been starting in about two weeks. So they won’t have to worry about that. If they are able to come back, we’re still working on that, they won’t have to worry about going into state testing, all of that will be waived and they’re not going to have worry about all of the end of the year kind of things,” Mackey said.
End of the year things include getting ready for a report card which would be in the fall. The grade schools received in 2019 will carry over to the 2020 school year. Now these changes will not affect students’ grades.
Mackey says the state hopes to have students back in the classrooms on April 6th but there is a possibility of an expansion.
