ATLANTA – Georgia State Superintendent Richard Woods let his feelings be known regarding a letter sent by the U.S. Department of Education Thursday afternoon.

The letter was sent to chief state school officers by U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and addressed the department’s plans to not grant federal testing waivers for the 2020-21 school year.

As Woods explained in his statement, the exact wording in the letter from DeVos said, “You should not anticipate such waivers being granted again.”

In July, Gov. Brian Kemp and Woods submitted a waiver of standardized testing and accountability requirements for the 2020-21 school year.

If this waiver had been approved, there would have been no administration of the Georgia Milestones EOGs, Georgia Milestones EOCs or Georgia Alternate Assessment 2.0 during the upcoming academic year, according to a previous statement from the GDOE.

A survey was taken during this initial submission. There were 98,252 responses and 96% strongly agreed or agreed with Georgia’s request for an assessment waiver. Additionally, 93.5% strongly agreed or agreed with Georgia’s request for a waiver of accountability mandates, which would apply to the College & Career Ready Performance Index.

“Secretary DeVos’s letter claims that ‘parents agree’ assessments should resume in the midst of the pandemic, but in Georgia, 98,000 people weighed in on our waiver request and 96% were in agreement with it. This announcement from USED disregards their voices and input,” Woods said in his statement.

Woods is still hopeful the USED may grant the accountability portion of Georgia’s waiver.

“Those who push the rhetoric about moving forward with high-stakes summative testing during a pandemic show total disregard for the realities faced by our families, students and educators. Make no mistake – these test scores will not be used to support teaching and learning, as the proponents suggest. They will be used to undermine our public education system, understate the heroic efforts of our teachers and undercut any opportunity we have for a full K-12 recovery,” Woods said.

Woods encourages districts, families, educators and students to not worry about the tests, stating they are “neither valid nor reliable measures of academic progress or achievement.”

He plans to announce a list of actions and recommendations to reduce the pressure of high-stakes testing in Georgia classrooms in the coming days.

“Who we are will be measured not by a test score, but by how we meet this moment,” Woods said.