Why is Florida making it harder to pass the FCAT

From the Palm Beach Post's editorial board

The state Board of Education will vote on Dec. 19th on recommendations to change the way the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test is graded.

Florida Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson wants to raise the minimum passing score for the 10th-grade reading FCAT.

The changes could have an outsized effect on 10th-graders, who have to pass the reading FCAT to graduate from high school.

Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson, who has been on the job 17 weeks, met with The Post’s Editorial Board on Monday and said that if the state Board of Education adopts his recommendation to raise passing FCAT scores, 15,000 additional 10th-graders could flunk the reading FCAT this school year.

Students who take the reading and math FCAT are put into one of five levels of achievement based on their numerical scores. Level 3 is considered to be “on grade level.” The state sets so-called “cut scores” to define the range of scores for each achievement level.

Education Commissioner Robinson has recommended raising “cut scores” in elementary, middle and high schools. The impact will be important in the third grade, where students must pass the reading FCAT to be promoted to the fourth grade. But the stakes are highest in the 10th grade.

Many state educators actually had recommended lowering “cut scores” for high school students taking the reading FCAT. Although FCAT scores have been steadily improving in elementary and middle schools ever since the test was introduced more than a decade ago, scores for high school students have not improved.

The results seem to show that Florida students can read just fine until they hit high school. Then, for some reason, they develop reading problems.

The educators who want lower “cut scores” say students do not get dumber in high school. They say the fault is in the grading system.

But Education Commissioner Robinson doesn’t buy that explanation and is pushing for higher “cut scores” in high school.

We think the state should not raise “cut scores” in high school until it better understands why FCAT scores drop so much in the 9th and 10th grades. Just demanding higher scores – without a good plan to achieve those scores – seems like more of the punitive approach that Jeb Bush introduced when he first used FCAT scores to label schools as “failing.”

We also think the plan, which is to use the higher “cut scores” this school year, is premature. The school year is half over, and the Legislature cut education funding 8 percent. It’s not fair to raise requirements under those circumstances.

But Education Commissioner Robinson thinks that the only way to get better FCAT results – which he says translates into better college readiness – is to keep raising the bar. And he says there never will be a perfect time to do that, so the state needs to go ahead and do it as soon as possible.

http://blogs.palmbeachpost.com/opinionzone/2011/12/12/should-florida-make-it-harder-to-pass-the-fcat/?mid=55080