Ohio House votes to ease weight of K-12 testing
Mar. 5—COLUMBUS — Standardized testing will go on in Ohio's K-12 schools this spring, pandemic or no pandemic, but negative consequences from poor scores on those tests will not occur, under a bill the Ohio House of Representatives passed overwhelmingly Thursday.
"House Bill 67 has one single purpose — to provide relief to students returning to schools so that these tests have as little impact on them as possible for this school year and this school year only," said state Rep. Kyle Koehler (R., Springfield), who sponsored the bill with state Rep. Adam Bird (R., Cincinnati).
The Biden administration recently announced it would not waive federal testing requirements for this school year, so the Ohio House voted to ease poor scores' ramifications instead.
The chamber rejected Democratic attempts to give school districts the option of ditching the tests, give students the option not to physically return to the classroom to take them, and to extend the testing window into the summer.
Gov. Mike DeWine had indicated a reluctance to simply drop state testing since the results could be instructive on what students may have lost during the year of coronavirus when many were instructed virtually.
When the bill was first introduced, it would have required the state Department of Education to seek testing waivers from the federal government.
Instead it would exempt public and private schools from having to administer the state's American history end-of-course exam, would expand the windows for taking mandated tests in March, April, and May, and would provide a path to a high school diploma instead of relying on a score on a graduation test.
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State Rep. Lisa Sobecki (D., Toledo) tried without success to amend the bill to give schools the choice of scrapping or proceeding with state tests.
"In my own district the high-schoolers just returned to their building for the first time all year," she said. "Waiving the additional state tests, allowing schools to choose to take the tests, is fair. It's fair to each local community who can decide whether the test is the right thing for them based on what their school did this year, and it's fair to students."
The bill now heads to the Senate, and time is of the essence. The first tests begin March 22, in some cases just weeks after students physically returned full-time to the classroom.
Although the bill passed the House 93-1, it failed in a separate vote to get the super-majority needed to attach an emergency clause allowing it to take effect immediately upon the governor's signature rather than wait the usual 90 days.
Jennifer Hogue, spokesman for the Ohio School Boards Associations, noted that, without an emergency clause, the bill won't take effect until June, after the testing window will already have closed. She voiced hope that the Senate will add one before returning the bill to the house.
"This will ensure Ohio's children have the flexibilities needed to their complete the school year amid the COVID-19 pandemic," she said. "It will also help school leaders comply with federal testing requirements by lengthening the state's assessment windows."
The bill allows students to use final course grades in lieu of a final graduation test score in order to qualify for a diploma for this school year and through the 2023-24 school year. It would also allow a student to graduate if the principal, teachers, and counselors determine the pupil had successfully completed the curriculum or an individualized education program.
The state will again be prohibited from using the results to issue school report cards that assign overall grades that negatively impact a school or teacher evaluation. Schools, however, will receive data on how each of their students specifically performed on the third-grade reading guarantee test.
The state also may not use the fact that a student did not take the standardized tests to subtract that student from a school's pupil count for funding purposes.
First Published March 4, 2021, 3:26pm
