Dear GAE Colleagues,
This afternoon Superintendent Woods released his “list of actions and recommendations to reduce the pressure of high-stakes testing in Georgia classrooms for the 2020-2021 school year.”
We are pleased that the recommendations include the following:
- Virtually eliminating the 20% End of Course Milestones grade weight – the new weight will be 0.01% (due to state law it cannot be zero).
- Waiving End of Grade Milestones consideration in promotion/retention – the official directive from DOE is that these tests are not the basis for promotion/retention decisions.
- Providing flexible options for winter administration of End of Course assessments – districts will be granted as much flexibility as possible to administer Georgia Milestones appropriately and safely.
Under the next steps, the DOE announcement indicates that they have worked with the Governor’s Office on a proposed Executive Order that would waive the full TKES/LKES process for the 2020-2021 school year.
As I said in both the statement and letter to Governor Kemp, educators’ only focus during this continued time of crisis should be the physical, social, emotional, and academic well-being of students.
I am asking you to reach out to Governor Kemp concerning this issue, as well. Call his office or send an email.
Some things you might want to include in your message to Governor Kemp:
- Identify yourself as an educator and talk about your school community.
- Educators are spending a great deal of time in Professional Development to improve our instruction in the various models. This is more beneficial to students than spending that time preparing for or responding to a TKES/LKES observation.
- Asking administrators to adapt TKES to the various hybrid and remote instructional models eliminates the validity and reliability of the instrument.
You may hear from those who believe that our support of this action is a desire to avoid accountability. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our support of this action is to promote shared accountability and mutual support amongst educators, families, and the community to ensure that our students emerge from this crisis physically, socially, emotionally, and academically healthy.
As always, thank you for being a member of GAE and for all you do for our students!
Lisa
