In a Monday meeting, the State Board of Education unanimously approved a rule to weigh Georgia Milestones End-of-Course test scores at 0.01% at minimum of a student’s final grade for the 2020-2021 school year. The decision comes after back-and-forth votes earlier this semester.
Standardized tests like the Milestones were waived in the spring after the coronavirus pandemic forced schools to switch almost overnight to online learning. In July, Georgia School Superintendent Richard Woods and Gov. Brian Kemp submitted a request for another waiver, but U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos stated she was unlikely to waive them again in a September letter to the Council of Chief State School Officers.
In October, Woods proposed reducing the weight of the scores to 0.01% to alleviate students’ stress in an already challenging school year. The board rejected the idea in an 8-4 vote over concerns that students would not take the tests seriously with such a low score weight. Last month, however, the board reversed course, voting 10-3 to pass the measure before Monday’s final vote.
The Georgia Milestones EOCs are typically taken in high school in four subject areas — Algebra, U.S. history, biology and American literature and composition — and count for 20% of a student’s final grade. The November state board vote initially planned to halve that weight to 10% before settling on Woods’ 0.01% proposal.
Until Monday’s vote, the scores still counted for a fifth of course grades, enough to alter grade-point averages and chances for college admissions and scholarships.
Most of the districts giving Milestones exams during the winter testing window were scheduled to finish testing before the vote, so thousands of students had to decide whether to show up at schools to take the tests before knowing the final vote’s outcome.
On Monday, board member Helen Odom Rice was the only one to make a comment before the board voted. She said she was unsure of where the board was moving regarding waivers, but mentioned her previous suggestion of a formative assessment approach. Formative assessments “are diagnostic and non-high-stakes and are designed to monitor student learning and plan instruction, rather than to report out results for accountability purposes,” according to a July Georgia Department of Education press release.
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