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STATEWIDE STUDENT TESTS FACE SEVERE CUTBACKS MISSOURI WILL NOW PAY FOR ONLY THE MATH AND ENGLISH EXAMS
St. Louis Post Dispatch , Friday, May 24, 2002
The Associated Press
Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT , Section: METRO , Page: C7

JEFFERSON CITY - State money will pay for standardized tests in just math and English next school year, but school districts still might be able to test students in science and social studies - if they are willing to pay for it.

The state budget lawmakers recently passed includes a 60 percent cut in funding next school year for the Missouri Assessment Program tests, leaving enough money to pay for just the math and communication arts tests. The health and physical education test will not be offered.
But state education officials said Wednesday that schools will be given the option of paying for the science and social studies tests.

For it to be worthwhile to print the science and social studies tests, they would have to be administered to about 48,000 students in each grade level - about two-thirds of the students statewide in each grade, said state Education Commissioner Kent King.

If too few schools choose to administer the two tests, then they won't be given to anyone, King said.

Lawmakers cut the state's contribution for the MAP tests to $5.1 million for next school year, from $12.8 million appropriated this year.

The cut was prompted partly by general state budget problems and partly by complaints from some lawmakers and teachers that the tests are cu mbersome and sometimes go beyond reasonable expectations of what children should know.

Test results are used by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to help determine a district's accreditation status.

King said districts opting to pay for the science and social studies tests could continue to count those results toward their accreditation formula.

Districts opting not to give the tests would not be penalized in the accreditation process, he said.

Some local school officials gave mixed reviews to the state's pay-on-your-own testing option.

While the tests should not be eliminated, schools might be pinched to pay for them, said John Martin, superintendent of the Grandview C-4 School District near Kansas City.

"I'm not sure we are in any better position to deal with added cost than the state was," Martin said. "It is going to be something we are going to have to take a long hard look at."

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