Last year at a faculty meeting my principal with a wink and a nod and told me not to fail anybody. The reason being is if a kid failed but made gains on the FCAT then they wouldn’t count. That was bad but what you are about to read below is worse.
The Shanker blog in a recent post sheds more light on just how disingenuous Florida’s scoring system really is.
Students who are proficient (level 3) or better in year one, and remain proficient or better in year two without decreasing a level (i.e., from “advanced” to “proficient”) are coded as “making gains.” In other words, any student who is “proficient” or “advanced” in the first year and remains in that category (or moves up) the second year counts as having “made gains,” even if their actual scores decrease or remain flat.
Read that again, if a proficient student makes no improvement in their second year in fact they can even get worse as long as they don’t get a lot worse, they still show gains.
Imagine your student made an 85 a solid B, the next year when they made an 82 do you think that would be a gain? No of course not but the state of Florida counts it as one.
How much of these so called gains we're making our legitimate?
Friends if you care about education check out the Shanker blog by cutting and pasting below into your browser or click on the blog’s title.
http://shankerblog.org/?p=4903
A flat score being considered a gain was explained to me the following way when I worked in Testing several years ago:
ReplyDeleteHaving a flat scale score from one year to another can be considered a gain because the complexity of what is being tested is a year harder. For example, if a student in 3rd made an 85, and then made an 85 in fourth, on a test which is developmentally a year more complex, that would be considered a gain.
The FCAT Developmental Scale Score (DSS) was created to better quantify growth. I could never get a straight answer on how those numbers are derived:)
Just a comment on how it was explained to me. Either way I appreciate your continued dialogue on testing and how it impacts our profession.