Florida’s testing season has ended. The final bell of the school year is near. Yet so much about the state’s new exams has changed or remains in limbo following a spring filled with testing problems and new legislation. State and local education officials are scrambling to decipher the new laws and implement them for students, parents and schools.
Here is a Q&A that recaps what has happened so far and outlines where things stand on some key, unresolved issues.
Some of the answers may surprise you.
Will Florida students be taking fewer tests from here on out?
Not really. Most of the tests that the Legislature eliminated were ones that students had not yet taken, but were about to take. Those included an 11th-grade language arts exam and several local course-specific year-end tests to be used for evaluating teachers. Lawmakers capped state and district testing at 5 percent of time in class, or about 45 hours, which is more than what most students ever sat for.
