Bill advances to eliminate redundant tests

State Sen. Lindsey Tippins, R-Marietta, sponosred Senate Bill 211, which the House Education Committee xxxx by a vote of x-x. BRANT SANDERLIN / BSANDERLIN@AJC.COM

State Sen. Lindsey Tippins, R-Marietta, sponosred Senate Bill 211, which the House Education Committee xxxx by a vote of x-x. BRANT SANDERLIN / BSANDERLIN@AJC.COM

The House Education Committee unanimously approved today a bill that strives to replace standardized state tests with national tests like the SAT and ACT.

Senate Bill 211 attempts to eliminate redundancies between national tests and Georgia's End of Course Test, allowing students to take fewer tests.

"The concept behind all this is trying to build in efficiencies in our testing regiment that we have in this state and not have to give duplicate tests if we have one set of tests that will give us the information that we need," said the bill's sponsor, Senator Lindsey Tippins, R-Marietta.

The bill instructs the Georgia Department of Education to perform a comparability study to see if state standards are interchangeable with national test standards.

The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 51-0 on March 3. Its next step will be to come before the House for a full vote.

Click here to read more about lawmakers' attempt to eliminate duplicative tests.

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