A day after the Florida House unanimously backed a bill to reduce state-mandated student testing, the Senate took a whack at the hotly debated topic.
The measure that emerged Thursday from the Senate Education Appropriations subcommittee (SB 616) included the same goal of reducing the state’s emphasis on tests. But it differed from the House version in several key ways.
Among them, the Senate bill:
• Offers a “relief valve” that allows schools that faced significant troubles with spring computerized testing to seek a waiver of consequences associated with the results.
• Caps the amount of state- and district-mandated testing at 5 percent of students’ total school hours.
