The State Board of Education has decided not to require students to take the fall Idaho Standards Achievement Test next year. The exam was meant to aid educators in gaging student academic growth between fall and spring and was considered the cornerstone of the State Board’s plan to test student progress when the ISAT’s were first introduced in the early part of this decade. However, Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna says the exams have not lived up to their potential and the roughly $500,000 savings could be used to help restore the ninth grade spring ISAT that was lost when the Board encountered financial problems earlier this year. The exams are administered four to six weeks after school starts each year and much of school district’s educational activities and resources are geared toward the spring test. The spring ISAT is used to determine whether schools meet statewide benchmarks for academic progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. School districts have complained that the fall exams failed to give them the kind of information they required to help improve student instruction and overall scores. It’s estimated that nearly 280,000 students take the fall ISAT annually.