I feel so sorry for Florida teachers, parents, and students. They worked their butts off preparing for a new tougher FCAT 2.0. The failure was massive.
I think one good thing may have come from this. Even our sometimes clueless education commissioner realized something important. That something was wrong, that the students did NOT get that "dumb overnight".
State Lowers Passing Score for FCAT Writing
In a unanimous vote today, the State Board of Education decided to lower the passing score for the writing portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test so that school districts across the “state could be held harmless.”
The emergency board meeting was held after new scoring caused results to drop dramatically.
“When I saw the dramatic drop, I realized that students didn’t overnight become bad writers,” Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson said. “There should’ve been more follow-up on the changes and rigor.”
Here is a summary of the results, missing some counties.
According to results posted on the DOE’s website, 27 percent of fourth-graders scored above 4.0 statewide compared with 81 percent in 2011; 33 percent of eighth-graders scored above 4.0 compared with 82 percent in 2011; and 38 percent of 10th-graders scored above 4.0 compared with 75 percent in 2011.
Unfortunately our education commissioner, Gerard Robinson, seems rather clueless about what students and parents and teachers need for a good and thorough education.
Some quotes from a recent interview with a few of my own views added. His answers were curt and rather condescending in my opinion. Note that he believes that all this testing is preparing kids to be functional adults. Pay attention to the part about the tension causing students to throw up, and how that plays into making them functional.
Florida's Education Commissioner in his own words.
His answers are in bold.
Does Florida spend enough on schools?
Enough compared to what?
That is a smart alecky answer from a man who is in charge of Florida's schools.
Interviewer: My son is in third grade right now, and I can't tell you how much he saw it as being high stakes. And it wasn't because of what we said in our house. It was because of what was said in the school. Be that as it may, would you take Florida in that direction?
Would I take Florida away from high-stakes testing?
Or in changing the direction of the testing mentality.
So, the article that I read said kids are nauseated. There's actually an example from one school district of a principal who sent a bag of throw-up with the test to prove that it did happen. We need to separate this between testing accountability and anxiety. The work that you guys do here, there's probably some anxiety. A lot of work, a lot of deadlines. So we know that what we're doing in part through the schooling process, independent of testing, is preparing students for how to be functional adults in what we call an economy you can make a living in. ... So the anxiety part is independent of school.
His emphasis on the term "functional" bothers me a lot. He also seems to believe the anxiety is independent of schools.
Perhaps something good will come out of such a huge failure, perhaps it will cause some questioning to happen on the part of the state leaders.
I may be retired as a teacher, but I am in touch with those who are not and with students who are going through this stress.
I believe that a few words from our party's own leaders could make a big difference and take some pressure off students, teachers, and parents...and let them get back to some semblance of truly in-depth learning.