Florida School Boards Association
The advent of new Florida academic standards and tests has created an opportunity for the Department of Education to revise school grading rules at the same time it sets test cut scores. Some of the changes int the proposed rule are fairly significant. For the first time, a school’s grade would be based only on…
Students in virtual charter schools fare significantly worse than their peers in traditional schools, and the picture in Florida looks especially bleak, according to a new study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). Virtual charters provide flexibility that might benefit some students, the report concludes, but right now, “Academic benefits from online charter…
The senior member of Florida’s State Board of Education called for more honesty in test score reporting Wednesday, just hours after the release of new nationwide data showing student performance had slipped in key areas. Fourth- and eighth-grade scores in the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress slid in Florida, after years of steady improvement.…
TALLAHASSEE — Members of the Florida Board of Education want Education Commissioner Pam Stewart to provide them with more data to help them set passing marks for the new statewide assessment, which continues to attract backlash from superintendents, teachers and parents statewide. Standing by the Florida Standards Assessments and in an effort to prove the…
Parent reports for the first administration of the Florida Standards Assessment went home Tuesday, but don’t expect to be able to make much sense of them. The reports don’t say whether a student passed or failed, as the bar hasn’t been set. Education Commissioner Pam Stewart has said that information won’t be available until at…
When the Education Department releases its biennial scorecard of reading and math scores for all 50 states this week, Florida and Texas are likely to look pretty mediocre. In 2013, the last time that scores were released, Florida ranked 30th on the tests, which are given to fourth and eighth graders, and Texas ranked 32nd.…
BOULDER, CO (October 25, 2015) – Yesterday, the Obama Administration acknowledged its own role in escalating the nation’s over-reliance on high-stakes, test-based accountability policies. It issued a Testing Action Plan for states, including a section on “reducing the reliance on student test scores through our rules and executive actions,” backing away somewhat from the Administration’s…
MIAMI — When protests from parents and teachers erupted against the new Common Core tests here, Florida thought it had a solution: It dropped the tests. But it abruptly switched sources for the exams, hoping the substitute would be more palatable. Now, nearly six months after students finished taking their exams, Florida faces an even…
The Florida School Boards Association has formally adopted a resolution calling on Gov. Rick Scott to waive the use of 2015 state test results for school grades, personnel evaluations, student progression and other uses. The group also built upon superintendents’ request for a full review of the state’s education accountability program, which several groups have…
Florida’s accountability system is broken. Due to its hasty construction, a third of the questions for third-grade reading are not directly aligned to the standards they are supposed to measure. A lapse in the test construction process, moreover, failed to tie the complexity of the test questions to the proficiency levels being assessed. This FSA…