Texas thinks Florida has gone to far with testing.

From the New York Times

by Morgan Smith

Texas leaders say testing has gone too far, As we've seen in the past few weeks, testing reigns supreme in Florida education policy.

The Florida Board of Education raised the passing scores for the new, tougher version of the FCAT. Gov. Rick Scott and his education commissioner released school and district rankings based entirely on FCAT results. Lawmakers tied teacher evaluations, pay and employment status to students' testing performance.

The only talk of scaling back comes as a plan to replace the FCAT with end-of-course exams in select high school courses.

Testing in Florida appears to equal accountability. There's a different conversation going on in Texas.

The NY Times reports that even as Texas also moves to tougher tests, tied for the first time to graduation, leaders are suggesting that they've taken testing too far.

"There is anxiety among school leaders, educators and parents about meeting the increased standards with fewer resources. In the Panhandle, the Hereford Independent School District superintendent may withhold her district’s test scores from the state. An Austin parent is considering a lawsuit to stop the rollout of the tests. Some legislators are mulling how to postpone some of the tests’ consequences for students.

"In a high-level turnaround, Robert Scott, the commissioner of the Texas Education Agency, said Tuesday that student testing in the state had become a 'perversion of its original intent' and that he looked forward to 'reeling it back' in the future. Earning a standing ovation from an annual gathering of 4,000 educators that has given him chillier receptions in the past, Mr. Scott called for an accountability process that measured 'every other day of a school’s life besides testing day.'"

We've heard many teachers and parents talk this way in Florida before. But it has fallen on mostly deaf ears. FCAT testing begins at the end of the month with writing. Any parents holding their kids out? School districts refusing to send in their results?

I am very concerned about performance on the test. My expectation is for most students this would have the effect of lowering their grade,” said Dineen Majcher, a high school parent who has called on lawmakers and the education agency to find a way to waive the 15 percent rule for the first year of testing.

School districts have been given a one-year reprieve from having the test scores factor into their accountability ratings, and Ms. Majcher said it was “completely unreasonable and inappropriate” that the same was not happening for students and their grades. Ms. Majcher, an Austin lawyer, said she and other parents were considering a lawsuit, but she declined to elaborate on its grounds because she still hoped for a resolution outside the courtroom.

That may not come in time. Mr. Scott’s Tuesday speech, while popular with the state’s superintendents, inspired a flurry of reaction from members of the education community who favor moving forward with the new assessment system. Bill Hammond, the president of the Texas Association of Business and an accountability advocate, said he was disappointed in the commissioner’s remarks.

“It’s not going to be the end-of-the-world scenario,” he said. “The kids and educators in Texas are up for it. Every time we’ve gone through this, the standard has been met, and it’s resulted in a better-educated work force.”

Ms. Shapiro said that once the transition to the new exams occurred, students would be left with a much better assessment system, one that eliminated the need for educators to teach to the test because it was based on courses, not subjects. It was never lawmakers’ impression that they would have to change anything about the rollout of the exams, she said, because the planning had been in the works for the past five years.

She also questioned what Mr. Scott meant by calling the testing system a “perversion.”

“That’s a direction I’ve never heard him take,” she said. “He’s been the one that’s been talking about school accountability over the years. We’ve all been a part of this. School accountability is something we started many, many years ago, and we believe in it.”

Meanwhile, Ms. Chamness, who praised Mr. Scott’s remarks, said she has reached out to other parents at her elementary school about opting their children out of standardized testing — to mixed results.

“They are waiting to see what happens to us,” she said. “Nobody wants to get on the outside of the administration. I’m not excited about being out there alone, but that’s not going to dissuade me from doing what I know is right.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/us/student-assessments-facing-stiff-backlash-in-texas.html?pagewanted=2