OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska’s new academic assessments may eventually reduce the time students spend in state testing and get scores back to districts quicker, a state official said.

The state Department of Education’s Nebraska Student-Centered Assessment System tests will replace the Nebraska State Accountability tests, the Omaha World-Herald reported.

The new tests, which students will begin seeing in March, feature computer-adaptive questions for math and English. The computer will adjust the difficulty of the questions based on a student’s answers. If a student gets a question correct, the next question will be harder. A wrong answer will result in an easier question.

The adaptive approach more quickly and accurately pinpoints how well a student knows a subject, said Valorie Foy, the state’s director of assessment.

“It engages our struggling learners, who may have more trouble encountering those very, very difficult test items and may be more frustrated and thus engage in the test less,” she said. “So it gives them items so they’re not overwhelmed.”

This year’s tests results likely won’t be available until fall, but scores should be available more quickly in following years, Foy said.

The rollout is the state’s latest attempt to find a testing system that meets state and federal requirements without burdening students and teachers with excessive testing. There have been three different testing systems used in the past two decades.

State and federal laws require public school students to be tested in math, English and science. The results must be made public and are broken down by various categories including race, ethnicity, gender and poverty.

The new tests mark a shift in philosophy, said Nebraska Education Commissioner Matt Blomstedt.

“Ultimately, the accountability piece is part of our system, but not the focus of our system,” he said, “and I think that’s a good thing and a good place for Nebraska to be.”

The scores will still be used to identify low-performing schools that need assistance.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Trump administration will rewrite rules governing how to choose areas considered critical to endangered species to settle a lawsuit brought by 20 states and four trade groups, according to state attorneys general.

The endangered species director for an environmental nonprofit says that’s terrible news. Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity says the administration has “shown nothing but hostility toward endangered species.”

The attorneys general for Alabama and Louisiana said in news releases Thursday that the administration made the agreement Thursday to settle a lawsuit brought by 20 states and four national trade groups, challenging two changes made in 2016.

According to the lawsuit, the rules are now so vague that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service “could declare desert land as critical habitat for a fish and then prevent the construction of a highway through those desert lands, under the theory that it would prevent the future formation of a stream that might one day support the species.”

A spokeswoman for Fish and Wildlife referred a request for comment to the U.S. Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to phoned and emailed queries. A NOAA Fisheries spokeswoman did not immediately respond Thursday.

“We are encouraged that the Trump administration has agreed to revisit these rules, which threaten property owners’ rights to use any land that the federal government could dream that an endangered species might ever inhabit,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in his news release. “These Obama-era rules were not only wildly unreasonable, but contrary to both the spirit and the letter of the Endangered Species Act.”

Greenwald said, “Their case didn’t have a leg to stand on.”

But, he said, “The Trump administration doesn’t want strong and needed protection for endangered species. It’s not surprising they would just roll over and agree to rewrite the rules.”

He said critical habitat doesn’t require landowners to do anything.

“It requires federal agencies to ensure that actions they take don’t adversely modify critical habitat,” Greenwald said. “So it’s only when the federal government is involved in a project — either through funding or through permitting — that there’s additional requirements.”

Critical habitat is at the center of a separate lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court agreed in January to review district and appeals court rulings that upheld Fish and Wildlife’s designation of 1,500 acres (607 hectares) of Louisiana timberland as critical habitat for the dusky gopher frog, an endangered frog found only in Mississippi.

The 3½-inch-long frogs once lived in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, but now live only in a few parts of Mississippi with temporary ponds that dry up in the summer, leaving them free of fish that might eat the frogs’ eggs. Adults come out of underground burrows in the winter and spring to breed in those ponds.

The Louisiana tract is the only land outside Mississippi that could be made suitable as a breeding ground, experts testified.

Greenwald said he doesn’t think new regulations would be approved in time to affect that suit. He says he doesn’t know of any other active suits involving critical habitat.