Now that the SAT-9 will no longer be given at WV public schools, can homeschoolers still satisfy the annual assessment requirement by testing in the schools?
Yes. The part of the law pertaining to annual assessment was written to allow homeschoolers to comply with the annual assessment requirement by participating in the public school testing program. As most people know, the SAT-9 has been retired from use in WV public schools and replaced by the Westest. The new test will be given in all WV public schools next year (2003-04). The Westest has been in the works for a long time, and we (WV taxpayers) paid a lot of money for it! The test is a mixture of questions written to coincide with the WV Instructional Goals and Objectives and questions purchased from the CTB/McGraw-Hill TerraNova series. This combination will give administrators two kinds of scores: a criterion-referenced one that shows how the students and schools measure up against the state’s stated objectives, and a norm-referenced one that shows (like the SAT-9) how they measure up against a national norm group. Whether a student has made acceptable progress will be determined by
