EdNC. Essential education news. Important stories. Your voice.

Search ednc.org

History of assessments in North Carolina

Share this story

Our republishing policy

EdNC is a nonprofit, online, daily, independent newspaper. All of EdNC’s content is open source and free to republish. Please use the following guidelines when republishing our content.
  • Our content must be republished in full. If your organization uses a paywall, the content must be provided in full for free.
  • Credit our team by including both the author name and EdNC.org in the byline. Example: Alex Granados, EdNC.org.
  • If republishing the story online, please provide a link to EdNC.org or a link to the original article in either the byline or credit line.
  • The original headline of the article must be used. Allowable edits to the content of the piece include changes to meet your publication’s style guide and references to dates (i.e. this week changed to last week). Other edits must be approved by emailing Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected].
  • Photos and other multimedia elements (audio, video, etc.) may not be republished without prior permission. Please email Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected] if you are interested in sharing a multimedia element.
  • If you republish a story, please let us know by emailing Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected].
Please email Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected] if you have any questions. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Canonical tag

Please include the following canonical tag in the <head> of the republished story.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.ednc.org/history-of-assessments-in-north-carolina/">

HTML content

This includes the title, byline, content, and tracking pixel required for republishing this story.

Copy & paste HTML
This story is tagged:

Remember Governor Pat McCrory’s 2015 State of the State Address?  He said, “We will eliminate unneeded testing by next year.”

The State Board of Education Task Force on Summative Assessment is considering changes in testing, including the possible elimination of End of Grade tests in grades 3-8. Instead, those grades could have a series of interim assessments that give teachers the ability to ascertain how well kids are learning and adjust instruction accordingly. 

The plan is still in the concept phase, and any recommendations have to go through the State Board of Education before changes take place. 

Dr. Sam Houston, President and Chief Executive Officer of the North Carolina Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Center, and also on the board of EdNC, spoke at the most recent meeting of the task force on Friday. He previously served as executive director of the North Carolina Education Standards and Accountability Commission and chaired the North Carolina State Board of Education’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Testing and Accountability in 2007. 

Noting that “you can’t test yourself into excellence,” Houston gave the task force an overview of recent history on assessments in North Carolina. Below are some of the highlights from his testimony.