Press Room
Maryland House Passes 2% Cap on School Testing
Testing Reduction Bills Move Forward in Maryland General Assembly
Annapolis, Maryland — Today, the Maryland House of Delegates unanimously passed legislation to limit local, state, and federal mandated standardized testing at 2% of annual instruction time—or a little more than 20 hours a year (HB 141). The forward movement follows the unanimous passage of legislation to change the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) into a sampling test (HB 657/ SB 794) by both the House and Senate last Friday. The 2% testing cap bill now moves to the Senate, while slight differences between the House and Senate KRA reform bills will be addressed between the two chambers.
The General Assembly has also moved bills designed to increase transparency of standardized testing in schools. Both chambers passed legislation last week to require school districts to publicly disclose all mandated standardized tests annually (HB 412/ SB 533), and later today, the House is expected to give final approval to require parental notification on all mandated testing every academic quarter (HB 1233).
The following statement can be attributed to Maryland State Education Association President Betty Weller:
“While we still have more work to do during the remainder of the General Assembly session, educators are thrilled to see that legislators have heard our calls for action and shown support for much-needed bills to undo Maryland’s over-testing problem. The emails, phone calls, lobby meetings, and social media posts by thousands and thousands of hard-working educators have put this issue squarely on the legislature’s agenda and created real momentum to significantly scale back standardized testing in Maryland schools for next year.