Florida's education bureaucracy is more devoted to testing than to students.

From TBO Online's editorial board

If the state wanted to destroy confidence in its school accountability efforts, its FCAT writing test was an enormous success.

But as a gauge of students' writing progress and schools' effectiveness, the test was a disaster.

The episode reveals an education bureaucracy more devoted to testing than to students.

School accountability is essential and is impossible without standardized testing, but it's time state education officials reviewed their top-down tactics.

The goal here was worthy: to improve students' writing skills. To do so the state sought to toughen grading on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test writing test, which is given to fourth-, eighth- and 10th-graders.

The 45-minute test was unchanged, but grading put greater emphasis on punctuation, spelling, capitalization and grammar. The grading scale is from 1 to 6, with 4 being passing.

Also, this year each student's work was read and graded by two people instead of one. Disagreements between the test-graders sometimes resulted in a half grade, such as a 3.5, instead of a 3 or a 4.

There was nothing objectionable about any of this, but Hillsborough school district officials said they were given little warning about how strict the grading would be.

Educators across the state also seemed taken by surprise.

Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson stresses the agency notified school districts about the tougher standards last summer but concedes communication could have been better.

That is an understatement. Last year 81 percent of students passed the test. This year preliminary results indicated that would drop to 27 percent.

The results, which are used to evaluate schools, were so dismal the Florida Board of Education, in an emergency meeting Tuesday, voted to lower the passing grade to 3. The change meant that passing rates would remain about the same as last year.

Given the huge role the tests play in school grading, the move was justified.

But it is all a bit of a sham and shows how tightly the state has hogtied education with testing results.

Because of the state's emphasis on testing, the focus has not been on whether students' writing skills are adequate, but whether the test results will unfairly lower schools' grades.

The problem is not that the state wants to improve writing skills, but that it relies so heavily on punitive standardized tests.

Did it ever occur to Tallahassee to collaborate with teachers on how to best achieve the desired results or to allow local districts time to experiment with different approaches?

With standardized tests driving the school bus, there is little room for innovation, imagination or flexibility.

Standardized tests do help determine a school's effectiveness; former Gov. Jeb Bush was right to demand schools be held accountable.

But the reliance on tests has been taken too far.

Flagler County reading coach Mella Baxter told the Associated Press: "We are testing our students to death, and we are taking away instruction time away from teachers to do it."

This latest disturbing episode suggests Florida's test score obsession may have become self-destructive.

http://www2.tbo.com/news/opinion/2012/may/18/naopino1-testing-obsession-ar-404917/