Oklahoma education officials anticipate there will be state testing in the spring.
Oklahoma State Department of Education Chief of Government Affairs Carolyn Thompson said at this point, the U.S. Department of Education isn’t sure it has authority to grant another testing waiver and Congress hasn’t indicated a willingness to make it happen.
"And to be frank, at least from our position, we need that data. Schools need that data. I mean, we have to have it so that we know where our kids are," Thompson told lawmakers Wednesday during an interim study.
Testing, however, may not mean sorting out the logistics of getting every student in a building. All of Oklahoma’s assessments will be online.
"This will be the first year that the third-grade reading assessment is online, so we’ll see how that goes. That was already in the works, by the way. We were already moving toward that. I think we were maybe going to do it next year instead of this year, but, you know, no time like the present," Thompson said.
A few states started seeking waivers to suspend standardized testing in the 2020–21 school year as early as June.
