NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: April 16, 2018
JACKSON, Miss. – Dr. Carey Wright, state superintendent of education, announced today she will convene the first Mississippi Student Testing Task Force to examine current student testing on the state and local school district levels and to determine best practices for monitoring student progress in meeting grade-level and subject area learning goals.
The task force, which will meet throughout the summer, will include a diverse group of stakeholders representing educators, legislators, parents, school board members and students from across the state. Senate Education Chairman Gray Tollison, R-Oxford, and House Education Chairman Richard Bennett, R-Long Beach, also will serve on the committee. A complete list of task force members will be released upon completion, as well as meeting dates.
The goals of the task force are:
- to determine the types, quality and amount of tests students take on the state and district level;
- to provide recommendations on ways to ensure student testing is streamlined but measures the learning goals designed by Mississippi teachers; and
- to discover and recommend best practices for student testing on the state and district level.
“We have heard concerns from parents, lawmakers and educators about the amount of testing on the state and district levels and the time spent on test preparation in schools. We believe that through the work of the task force we can come up with reasonable recommendations that will address these concerns while ensuring accountability among schools and districts to prepare our students for their next step, whether it’s the next grade, the workforce, military or college,” Wright said.
Mississippi First recently released a report on state and district testing and found an array of testing preparation practices in certain school districts studied. Part of the report included recommendations for the Mississippi Department of Education, and the task force will explore those recommendations and others over the next several months.
The task force will produce a report on its findings and recommendations by the end of the year.
