(A) The State Board of Education, in consultation with the Education Oversight Committee, shall provide for a cyclical review by academic area of the state standards and assessments to ensure that the standards and assessments are maintaining high expectations for learning and teaching. At a minimum, each academic area should be reviewed and updated every seven years. After each academic area is reviewed, a report on the recommended revisions must be presented to the Education Oversight Committee and the State Board of Education for consideration. The previous content standards shall remain in effect until the recommended revisions are adopted pursuant to Section 59-18-355. As a part of the review, a task force of parents, business and industry persons, community leaders, and educators, to include special education teachers, shall examine the standards and assessment system to determine rigor and relevancy.

(B) For the purpose of developing new college and career readiness English/language arts and mathematics state content standards, a cyclical review must be performed pursuant to subsection (A) for English/language arts and mathematics state content standards not developed by the South Carolina Department of Education. The review must begin on or before January 1, 2015, and the new college and career readiness state content standards must be implemented for the 2015-2016 school year.

(C) The State Department of Education annually shall convene a team of curriculum experts to analyze the results of the assessments, including performance item by item. This analysis must yield a plan for disseminating additional information about the assessment results and instruction and the information must be disseminated to districts not later than January fifteenth of the subsequent year.

HISTORY: 1998 Act No. 400, Section 2; 2008 Act No. 282, Section 1, eff June 5, 2008; 2014 Act No. 200 (H.3893), Section 4, eff June 19, 2014.

Editor's Note

2014 Act No. 200, Section 5, provides as follows:

"SECTION 5. On the effective date of this act, South Carolina will no longer be a governing or advisory state in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. Furthermore, South Carolina may not adopt or administer the Smarter Balanced Assessment."

Effect of Amendment

The 2008 amendment renumbered this section from Section 59-18-360; in subsection (A), deleted the second sentence requiring initial review by 2005; in the second and third sentences added "and the State Board of Education"; and added the fifth sentence relating to the previous content standards remaining in place; and, at the beginning of subsection (B), deleted "Beginning with the 2005 assessment results,".

2014 Act No. 200, Section 4, in subsection (A), deleted the former fourth sentence, relating to approval by the Education Oversight Committee, and rewrote the 4th sentence, relating to the previous content standards; added subsection (B); and redesignated former subsection (B) as subsection (C).