Atlantic School District Superintendent Dr. Mike Amstein, Wednesday, reported to the School Board, the 3^rd grade Summer School and 3^rd grade Retention for Reading, has been postponed until the Summer of 2018. He said also, of concern to the school board, is the fact there has been no funding attached to assessments. Amstein said the latest word he’s received, is that funding will be attached for those programs in the next legislative session. He wasn’t holding his breath though, says “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Amstein said also, that the “Smarter Balanced Assessment” was put off until May 2018. In November 2015, the Iowa legislature began a formal process of adopting a new state assessment to replace the current state tests in math and reading taken each year by Iowa students. Smarter Balanced Assessments were recommended by a legislatively created task force of Iowans.

He said “At this time, we don’t know what our State Assessment’s going to be. We’re kind of in limbo on what we need to prepare for, for the upcoming year.” Amstein says it’s another case of “We’ll just have to see what happens.”

Smarter Balanced Assessments are designed to accurately measure how students have progressed in reaching expectations set by Iowa’s academic standards, which outline what students in kindergarten through 12th grade should know and be able to do in math, English-language arts, science, social studies and 21st century skills.