A plan to overhaul statewide testing in Oklahoma public schools is now on hold, with the state’s top education official announcing Monday that spring assessments will continue as usual this year.
State Superintendent Lindel Fields said his administration will consider new approaches to statewide testing, but the process won’t change this year like his predecessor, Ryan Walters, promised. Fields advised school districts to “proceed as normal” with the annual tests, which the state uses to measure student and school performance.
Walters abruptly declared in August that he would do away with traditional state tests this school year and replace them with a wholly different assessment method. But, it appears Walters’ administration never submitted his plan to the federal government to implement the changes, said Tara Thompson, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma State Department of Education.
The U.S. Department of Education must give approval before a state can alter its testing program. Both state and federal law require testing of public school students.
Before his Sept. 30 resignation, Walters described his testing plan as nearly a done deal, predicting he would receive “very, very quick” approval from the Trump administration. His comments reportedly frustrated federal officials and led U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to exclude Walters from her August visit to Oklahoma.
Currently, Oklahoma students in grades 3-8 take statewide tests in math and reading each spring. Students in grades 5, 8 and 11 take a yearly science test. Eleventh graders also take a statewide U.S. history test and are tested in math and reading by completing the ACT.
Walters proposed eliminating the statewide math and reading tests. He suggested replacing them with benchmark assessments that students would take multiple times a year to give more up-to-date information on their academic progress.
Rather than having all students take the same incremental benchmark tests, Walters said he would allow districts to choose which assessments to purchase from private vendors.
Although some states have adopted the benchmark testing method, Oklahoma would have been the first state to use a patchwork of district-selected assessments. The Trump administration rejected a similar proposal from Arizona in 2018.
After collecting public comment for a month on Walters’ plan, his administration would have had to request a waiver from the federal government and be granted permission to make the overhaul. By then, Walters was only a few weeks away from resigning to lead a conservative nonprofit.
Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed Fields to finish Walters’ term through January 2027.
Fields hasn’t discarded the idea of updating the assessment process. He said he agrees there is a need for change in state testing, but “meaningful change takes time.”
“We are in discussions with the U.S. Department of Education and in the coming weeks, we will begin to explore innovative assessment options for future years,” Fields said in his announcement.
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