Senate Bill 813 Summary

• Amends Arkansas Code to clarify that state-mandated assessments include augmented, criterion-referenced, or norm-referenced assessments across 17 sections of education law

• Updates the Division of Public School Accountability's duties to coordinate analysis and reporting of all three assessment types (augmented, criterion-referenced, and norm-referenced)

• Modifies school improvement requirements, academic improvement plans, and adequate yearly progress definitions to reference all three assessment types rather than listing them separately

• Establishes that assessment programs must be valid, reliable, externally linked to national norms, and vertically scaled for grades 3-8 in reading, writing, and mathematics

• Requires removal of the requirement that assessment programs be "externally linked to a national norm" in one provision while maintaining other assessment standards throughout the code