From the Palm Beach Post
Florida Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson, on the job 17 weeks, wants to be even tougher on Florida high school students than his advisory groups have recommended. This would be a bad year to do that, and the state Board of Education should overrule Mr. Robinson when it votes in six days on new passing grades for the FCAT.
For the first time in a decade, the state is revising the "cut scores" that determine whether students pass the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Tenth-graders must pass the FCAT to graduate. Last year, 60 percent of 10th-graders passed the reading FCAT. With Mr. Robinson's recommendation as the standard, 52 percent would have passed. His advisory panels wanted to set a passing score that would have reduced last year's passing percentage to 56 percent.
In an interview Monday with The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board, Mr. Robinson acknowledged that if the state adopts his recommended 10th-grade cut scores, "15,000 additional students may not pass the FCAT on the first try." He noted that failing students can retake the FCAT in their junior and senior years, or use scores on the ACT or SAT college entrance tests. The passing rate on retakes is low. But we have two more basic objections.
One is timing. The higher FCAT bar would apply to this school year, which is almost halfway over. The Legislature cut education spending 8 percent this year. Gov. Scott and the Legislature also walloped teacher morale by requiring them to contribute 3 percent of pay toward retirement and by imposing a teacher evaluation and retention system that relies heavily on student's FCAT scores.
Mr. Robinson responded: "It's the year that we have to do it. It's often difficult to find any right time." He said Gov. Scott's request for an additional $1 billion for education next year is an attempt to boost teacher morale. But that money, even in the Legislature approves it, would not get state education spending back to where it was last year.
Our second objection is that raising the passing grade for 10th-graders wouldn't address the most serious problem with Florida's FCAT system. Though reading scores for elementary and middle school students steadily have improved in 12 years, that gain hasn't carried through to high school. Some educators even recommended lowering cut scores for high school students. Chronic low scores, they said, didn't prove that high school students suddenly forget how to read; they proved that the scoring system was wrong.
The state still doesn't understand why scores plummet in high school. Raising the cut scores - which would flunk more students, lower school grades and end the careers of more teachers - is the same punitive approach Gov. Bush embraced in 1999 when he misused FCAT scores to slap schools with the "F" label. "Raise scores or else" has political appeal, but it's not a credible plan to improve Florida's high schools.
- Jac Wilder VerSteeg,
for The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/editorials/skip-new-fcat-standard-dont-raise-cut-scores-2028173.html
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