A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT TO ENSURE THAT PARENTS RECEIVE A MARKED COPY OF TESTS TAKEN BY THEIR CHILDREN UNDER THE STATEWIDE TESTING PROGRAM.
The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:
SECTION 1.  G.S. 115C‑174.10 reads as rewritten:
"§ 115C‑174.10.  Purposes of the Statewide Testing Program.
The three testing programs in this Article have four purposes: (i) to assure that all high school graduates possess those minimum skills and that knowledge thought necessary to function as a member of society; (ii) to provide a means of identifying strengths and weaknesses in the education process in order to improve instructional delivery; (iii) to establish additional means for making the education system at the State, local, and school levels accountable to the public for results; and (iv) to provide parents and guardians with specific information on students' academic strengths and weaknesses."
SECTION 2.  Chapter 115C of the General Statutes is amended by adding a new section to read:
"§ 115C-174.13A.  Parental right to receive test results.
A school shall provide to a student's parent or guardian on request the results of any test administered to the student pursuant to this Article. The information provided to the parent or guardian shall include (i) a copy of the test administered, (ii) the student's responses, (iii) corrections or notations made by the evaluator of the test, and (iv) the teacher's or other test evaluator's assessment of the student's academic strengths and weaknesses based on the test results.
If the State Board of Education finds that the cost of providing copies of any 
State-designed test is excessive, the State Board of Education shall discontinue use of that State-designed test and substitute a commercially available nationally normed test that may be released at the end of the testing cycle."
SECTION 3.  This act becomes effective July 1, 2003.