Don’t think it’s safe for students to take in-person exams yet? Wake leaders understand.
The Wake County school system will not penalize students who skip or do poorly on the state-mandated exams that will be given in May and June.
Wake County school administrators said Tuesday they’ll “hold harmless” Virtual Academy students who choose not to take the state end-of-grade, end-of-course or career and technical education exams. Wake also will only count EOC and CTE exams into the final grades for high school students if it raises their final mark.
The testing changes are being made due to uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic this past school year.
“For a family who has been virtual all year, who doesn’t want their student to come in, who’s concerned about medical issues, we don’t want them to have to make a choice between their child or their family’s health and their GPA,” Brad McMillen, assistant superintendent for data, accountability and research, said Tuesday. “So we’re not going to let that happen.”
North Carolina high schools will give EOC and CTE exams later this month or in June to finish out the spring semester. Under state policy, the exams are supposed to count for 20% of a student’s final grade in that class.
But in a memo in November, State Board of Education chairman Eric Davis told superintendents they could use their “own derived 0 to 100 scale” for the EOC and CTE exams. This flexibility was used by school districts to ease the impact of the tests on students.
Elementary and middle schools will also be giving EOG exams to end this school year.
The exams had been waived last year, but are being required this year by the U.S. Department of Public Education. But the federal government isn’t penalizing schools if fewer than 95% of their eligible students don’t test this year.
Only in-person exams allowed
The state Department of Public Instruction is requiring all students to take their state exams in-person, even if they’re only taking online classes. This includes the 75,000 Wake County students in the Virtual Academy program created due to the pandemic.
Wake will invite Virtual Academy students to come on campus for the in-person exams. But if students don’t take the exams, the same approach will be used as in the fall semester with the EOC and CTE exams.
McMillen said they didn’t count the EOC and CTE exams in the fall semester when all high school students were taking online classes because they knew some concepts were hard to teach online.
Even though some high school students are now back taking in-person classes, McMillen said for consistency they need to treat the exams the same as they did in the fall.
▪ If a Virtual Academy student doesn’t take an EOC or CTE exam, the final course grade will be based on the average of the third and fourth quarter grades. If it’s a yearlong class, the grade will be based on the average of the first and second semester grades.
▪ For students who take the EOC and CTE exams, they’ll only be factored into the final grade if it will help them. This applies to both Virtual Academy and non-Virtual Academy students.
▪ EOG exams in third through eighth grades aren’t used for grading so students who don’t take them simply won’t receive a score.
Families apply for Virtual Academy
Superintendent Cathy Moore said Tuesday that more than 14,000 students had registered to attend the Virtual Academy for next school year. That’s considerably less than this school year now that COVID-19 vaccines have become more widely available.
Moore said some families missed the registration deadline that ended Sunday. She said those people are being asked to complete a waitlist registration form at http://www.wcpss.net/vawaitlist by May 12.
Unlike the earlier registration period, acceptance is not guaranteed.
School board approves budget request
Also on Tuesday, the school board approved a budget plan for the 2021-22 school year that requests a $28.2 million funding increase from the Wake County Board of Commissioners.
Moore said the additional money will help continue Wake’s mission of educating students post pandemic. The board made changes Tuesday to use additional federal COVID relief aid to increase spending on school maintenance and pay for support staff.
“You can take a look at this proposed budget and easily see what our priorities are,” said school board chairman Keith Sutton. “Those are taking care of our lowest-paid employees, making sure that we are making a priority the social and emotional well-being of our students, providing well-maintained facilities across the county for our staff and students, making sure that there’s appropriate compensation and benefits for all our employees.”
County Manager David Ellis is recommending providing a $23.2 million increase.
This story was originally published May 4, 2021 at 5:12 PM.
