Dive Brief:

• The Ohio Department of Education is asking the federal government to give fifteen districts permission to create and administer their own standardized tests in the 2016-17 school year.
• The request is part of a pilot program for alternative testing, which aims to acknowledge concerns about the current Common Core-aligned PARCC assessment that the state requires.
• The schools selected to be apart of this pilot program are part of the STEM or Innovation Lab Network, and there was some hope that their innovative approach to learning will come through in any assessment they created.

Dive Insight:

This is one of Ohio's many attempts to address the current backlash against both the Common Core and the associated tests. Other moves are the consideration of a bill that would cut school testing time by 20% and the focus of a state senate panel that is working to come up with long term testing recommendations. In May the state made moves to protect students from repercussions if they decided to opt out of the standardized testing (a noticeably different approach from Kentucky)

Ohio has has an uneasy relationship with the Common Core, in November a house committee voted 7-2  in favor of a Republican bill calling for the repeal of the standards.