CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - Charlotte - Mecklenburg school (CMS) district Interim Superintendent Hugh Hattabaugh has decided not to continue with adding more than 50 additional tests to give to students. He says the state will now pick up the tab.
"Since they are going down that path," Hattabaugh said. "And we're working in collaboration with them - it's just using resources more wisely."
CMS budgeted about $2 million for the added tests, but now since the state is developing the tests, the district will save a couple of hundred thousand dollars.
This was the idea of former superintendent Peter Gorman. He wanted to add those extra tests so the district could determine which teacher was getting the job done in the classrooms. This was a controversial move. Many teachers were upset and thought more testing was a bad idea.
"I think eventually with that continued level of testing," CMS Teacher Charlene Wolford said. "I really believe there would be an indicator our test scores would start going down because at that point we would have been teaching to test and not testing to teach."
Teachers also thought tests were not a good indicator of determining which teachers were effective.
"We have many students who don't do well on tests," Wolford said. "Many of our students you can't tell what they learned on a test."
The state will use federally funded dollars from Race to the Top to pay for the extra tests.
Eliminating tests is also viewed as a morale booster for teachers.
"It's one of those steps in rebuilding trust," Classroom Teacher Association President Judy Kidd said. "But it's only one step, but a journey of 1,000 steps begins with the first one. We can only be optimistic."
The new tests could make it on students' desks by next school year.
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