Senator: It’s time to move on from testing debacle

TALLAHASSEE — A key state senator said Thursday it’s time to stop harping on the problems that arose during state standardized testing earlier this year because there’s little the Legislature can do to fix it now anyway. Sen. John Legg, who chairs the chamber’s pre-kindergarten to 12th grade education committee, said it’s not worth entertaining…

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Gov. Rick Scott, Legislature on collision course over school funding

Gov. Rick Scott’s education team is promising a “historic” increase in per-student spending in Florida schools next year. But to do that, Scott’s advisers want to shift more of the burden of paying for schools from the state to local homeowners through higher property taxes, setting up a new confrontation with the Republican-controlled Senate. “I…

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Florida School Boards Association considers testing, choice proposals in legislative platform

With Florida legislative committees getting started, the state School Boards Association is putting the finishing touches on its legislative priority package for the new session. It’s focusing a lot of its attention on testing and accountability as it presents a proposal to members before formal adoption. Some of the ideas have been talked about before,…

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Editorial: Florida’s student tests deserve an F

Florida Education Commissioner Pam Stewart called it “welcome news.” County school superintendents say it confirms their worst fears about the botched rollout of the Florida Standards Assessments and suggest the test results are worthless. So you read the following annotated excerpts from the just-released $600,000 study by Alpine Testing Solutions of this year’s FSA and…

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Florida Department of Education releases recommended FSA cut scores

In conjunction with the first of three public hearings, the Florida Department of Education has released its educator and reactor panels’ recommended cut scores for the Florida Standards Assessments. The proposal, in a lengthy slide presentation, shows recommendations for math and language arts exams at several grade levels. Generally speaking, if applied the suggested levels…

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