State education board ends pact with testing company

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has ended its contract with testing consortium Smarter Balanced. DESE sent a letter to the group last week, stating Missouri will not continue as a licensee of materials for the 2015-2016 school year.

The letter addressed to Smarter Balanced executives was posted on Twitter by state Rep. Kurt Bahr on Thursday.

"Since the new budget year began July 1, DESE was required to inform the Smarter Balanced Consortium that Missouri was no longer a member. This is a victory for Missouri parents and students who did not vote for or want national standards or one-size-fits-all exams," Bahr said.

Bahr said the legislature started moving away from the consortium with last year's passage of HB 1490, which set up work groups to rewrite educational standards and redo the tests.

"This was the legislature's first step to move away from the Common Core standards our governor and the state board of education adopted without approval of or notice to the General Assembly. The General Assembly then used the power of the purse to defund our membership in the Smarter Balanced Consortium. Without membership, we cannot take the Common Core tests," Bahr said.

The prohibition on paying Smarter Balanced also comes in the wake of a Feb. 24 ruling by Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green that the state's partnership with the Common Core testing company is an "illegal interstate compact not authorized by the U.S. Congress."

As of Thursday, Poplar Bluff Public Schools still had not received the results of the 2015 tests. R-I school officials say next year they will go with an established test from a different vendor -- likely the Iowa Test of Basic Skills -- if the state does not have one in place.

State elected officials appropriated $7 million for a new assessment testing plan and a caveat that prohibits DESE from paying Smarter Balanced $4.2 million for the 2016 tests.