Education Department Asks 12 States to Address Low Test-Participation Rates
If you've been wondering how many states had significant issues with test participation last spring, there's an answer from the U.S. Department of Education.
Twelve states have received letters from the Education Department in recent months asking them to address lower-than-required participation rates on state exams for groups of students or districts, or statewide.
The states to receive these letters are: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin. (Click the individual link to see each state's letter from the department.) Some of the copies of the letters are undated, but several were sent in either early November or early December.
The Education Deparment's letters ask states to specify how they will address their local or state participation rates for the 2015-16 school year. The department includes possible examples of how states could act, such as lowering a school or district's rating on state accountability systems, and counting non-participating students as not proficient for accountability purposes.
On Tuesday, the department also released guidance for states in which it said that under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states need plans to address situations in which participation rates that dip below the required 95 percent.
The testing opt-out movement became a prominent story in education this year, particularly in some of the states listed above, like New York. Reasons for skepticism and opposition to the test included backlash to the Common Core State Standards, concerns about the amount of testing, and teacher evaluations that factored in test scores.
So what were some of the various statewide and other test-participation issues encountered by each state?
- California reported that it did not assess at least 95 percent of its students, or individual student subgroups, on both the English/language arts and math exams.Education Department Asks 12 States to Address Low Test-Participation Rates - Politics K-12 - Education Week:
