The Hernando County School District has decided to take out about 70 hours worth of testing for students in grades K-12.

  • Parents expressed concerns with amount of testing
  • Progress monitoring discontinued for several grade levels
  • Polk, Hillsborough, Pinellas Counties have also reduced testing

Danielle Underwood told us her daughter was getting stressed by the amount of testing she had early on in elementary school.

"My daughter is dyslexic and ADHD, so the struggle she had with those tests were harder than an average student would have," Danielle said.

Danielle said several other parents shared similar concerns about testing, which is a big reason they pushed to get tests reduced.

"The children are being tested and they're being tested more for data purposes, versus actually trying to see what they know," Danielle explained.

For the 2017-2018 school year, the district had decided to get rid of a number of tests, including progress monitoring for several grade levels as well as some end of course tests. The district said it is able to use other tests in place of these to monitor student progress.

Specifically, the school district has:

  • eliminated progress monitoring in writing for K-2 and reduced writing assessments from 4 tests to 2 for grades 3-10.
  • eliminated FAIR testing for reading in grades 6-12.
  • eliminated additional progress monitoring testing for grades 6-12. (Instead, teachers will use 9 weeks exam data to capture student learning.)
  • eliminated progress monitoring for Science in grades 3 and 4.

In addition, the following end-of-year (or end-of-course) tests were also eliminated:

  • K-5 Social Studies
  • K-4 Science
  • K-5 Specials
  • Algebra II EOC

"One of the benefits that we were hoping to gain from this is really giving that time back to classroom teachers and to students," Gina Michalicka, Executive Director of Academic Services, said.

Some parents we talked to say they're glad to see some of the evacuations removed, but still think more tests should be eliminated

Danielle said so much instruction time is wasted when teachers have to help students prepare for these types of standardized tests.

"When they sit in front of that test they get anxious, they forget things, they may not do as well as they would if the teacher who is the professional went to school to do this job could see and could evaluate where those kids are," she explained.

Hernando County isn't the only school district that has made cuts to testing. Polk, Pinellas, and Hillsborough counties have also taken steps to reduce tests for students.