The Alabama Board of Education recently terminated its contract with ACT Aspire for standardized testing, and it looks like the board has found a replacement.
Al.com reports that at a board meeting last night, Alabama Superintendent Michael Sentance announced school districts throughout the state can expect to use Scantron assessments for standardized testing in third through eighth grade beginning in the upcoming school year.
Scantron was formerly known as GlobalScholar. Between 60 and 65 percent of schools in the state currently use some kind of testing provided by the company. Administrators from the Florence City School system were also on hand last night to answer questions, as that system has been using the GlobalScholar tests to measure achievement for the past few years thanks to a waiver from former superintendent Dr. Tommy Bice.
Sentance also announced there won’t be any federal accountability testing for tenth grade students in the upcoming school year. Instead, he suggests using the ACT college entrance exam to double as the required federal accountability testing. That exam is given to all eleventh graders each spring.