State unsure how to pay for tests Perdue wants restored

By Kristina Torres

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

State school officials are not sure whether they have the money to restore any of a $7.2-million cut to the state's testing program that Gov. Sonny Perdue has told them to ignore.

Teacher groups, meanwhile, wonder whether it is worth the effort to even try --  given deeper cuts to education funding that have slashed state support for local schools, increased class sizes and furloughed staff.

The cut is part of $17.9-billion state budget that takes effect July 1. With it, lawmakers would have eliminated mandated state tests in the first and second grades, as well as writing tests for third- and fifth-graders. The move also shifted the costs of some voluntary tests for older students -- the PSAT and Advanced Placement exams -- back onto all but the poorest families.

Perdue, however, disagreed. When he signed the budget Tuesday, he authorized the state Education Department to ignore lawmakers' instructions and do what they could to keep the tests. However, because the governor does not have the power to unilaterally add funding, officials will have find the money from somewhere else in their budget to cover those costs.

"We have to try to figure out where the funding will come from," state schools Superintendent Kathy Cox said.

Cox announced last week that Georgia students improved for the second straight year in almost all areas of the state's Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, which checks students' knowledge in grades 1-8 against state curriculum in key subject areas like reading, English/language arts and mathematics.

The only three tests that saw small declines this year are among those lawmakers wanted to eliminate -- grade 2 reading, grade 2 English/language arts, and grade 1 mathematics. But that did not cause too much worry.

Tests for students so young are "statistically unreliable to begin with," Cox said. In general, researchers also have cautioned against large-scale, high-stakes testing of younger children, instead suggesting more diagnostic measures.

"CRCTs in grades 1 and 2 are, I think, of dubious value," said Tim Callahan, spokesman for the state's largest teachers group, the Professional Association of Georgia Educators. "If you've got to pick and choose which tests to pay for and keep," those would not be the ones, he said.

Bert Brantley, Perdue's spokesman, said the governor worried that cutting such tests would ill-prepare students to take them when it counted. State law requires students to pass their grade 3 reading test or face being held back.

Brantley also noted the success Georgia students have had with other tests on the block, including AP exams. Georgia last year had the 12th highest percentage of high school seniors scoring a 3 or higher on Advanced Placement exams, which are independently administered by the College Board. Such marks often result in college credit.

"It would be hard to be writing about test scores going up if we're not doing the tests," Brantley said. "We feel like we can get into that budget and find some dollars somewhere. We'll be working real closely with them" to do that, he said.

Georgia had been paying for all 10th-graders to take the PSAT -- a practice version of the SAT college entrance exam -- and for students to take two AP exams. Unless additional funding is found, it now will pay those costs only for students eligible for free and reduced-price lunches. The PSAT costs $13. Each AP exam is $86.