Issues in the spring have only further put a hamper on the TNReady testing for the students across Tennessee. And local districts like Elizabethton City Schools are hoping to see changes in the future.

City Board of Education members convened Tuesday evening and voted to approve a resolution calling for the state to make changes to its testing assessment program. The motion passed 4-0 with Grover May absent from the meeting.

Director of Schools Corey Gardenhour expressed support for Gov. Bill Haslam’s decision to have a third task force created to address concerns about the TNReady testing, but added the district hopes to see more of a focus put on the ACT, which colleges use to accept high school students.

“We’re with that,” Gardenhour said about the task force. “That’s where we want to be. The focus also becomes what we’re doing in high school. We would like the focus to be more focused on ACT as opposed to the TNReady test. Right now, we’re preparing for two tests. We have students that are really able to use the TNReady test a lot to move on to college.”

Gardenhour added officials have met with testing coordinators to see what has occurred during the testing cycle, whether it be the environment, the difficulty in scheduling and what the testing has done to teachers.

The director said coordinators have mapped out several issues and that this is the time to make the district’s voice heard in Nashville.

Elizabethton is making the resolution just a few days after Gov. Haslam’s “listening tour” came to a close. The tour was created following up criticism from the recent strand of errors from TNReady testing. Issues on TNReady have been reported statewide since 2016.

While adding it would be hard to guess, Gardenhour stated during the meeting he expects Gov. Haslam to have something in place before he leaves office in regards to the results from the listening tour and task force findings.

In the resolution passed during Tuesday’s meeting, the system states the current assessments causes the “loss of quality instructional time” and that state assessments for third through eighth grades should be executed into two parts, a writing assessment to be administered one day in February and English/language arts, math, science and social studies to be conducted in a five-day window in late April.

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In other business, the board heard updates on the Back-2-School Bash, Camp Read-a-Lot and concerns from a citizen about the grading scale involving a higher GPA for a student that participates in the Bartleby program compared to a student that takes an AP class.