From TCPalm.com, by Kelly Tyco
More Florida and Treasure Coast school boards could join a growing nationwide campaign against an "over-reliance" on high-stakes standardized tests like the FCAT.
Almost a week before state officials warned more rigorous grading on the writing portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test triggered a steep decline in scores, the St. Lucie County School Board approved a resolution asking the state to develop a new assessment system that relies less on standardized testing and urges the federal government to reduce testing requirements in the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
"There were phone calls that were made to discourage us from doing something because it seems to be politically unpopular," longtime St. Lucie board member Kathryn Hensley said after approving the resolution May 8. "This board takes a stand for things that are right and we will try to get other districts to follow a like course."
The St. Lucie County School Board became the second board in Florida to take a stand against testing following the Palm Beach County School Board, which approved the resolution in late April. The resolution is modeled after one more than 460 Texas school boards have signed.
Both Indian River County School Board Chairman Jeff Pegler and Martin County School Board Chairwoman Sue Hershey said they thought their school boards could also pass the resolution, which would then be sent to state and federal lawmakers.
"It hasn't been brought before the board yet but I think given the circumstances around the FCAT writing scenario, it's time for school boards to express their unhappiness to the Department of Education," Pegler said.
Other Florida school boards have expressed interest in joining the campaign and are expected to discuss the initiative during the Florida School Boards Association and Florida Association of District School Superintendents joint conference in June.
Florida's standardized state-mandated exam affects a school's state-issued letter grade, student graduation and, starting this year, teacher evaluations and, ultimately, their pay.
"What bothers me the most about it is they're asking us to evaluate teachers on it, they're assigning school grades on it, the Department of Education decided to rank all the schools in the state of Florida," Pegler said, "and they can't even establish or create a test that they have confidence in. So how are we supposed to have confidence in it?"
The FCAT is critical for third-grade students, who must pass the reading part or risk being retained. High-school students must pass the 10th-grade reading FCAT to graduate high school.
After preliminary writing scores showed about a third of students would have passed the writing FCAT compared with 80 percent or better last year, the state Board of Education voted to lower the passing score during an emergency meeting May 15. On Friday, the state released school and district-level scores for the writing test and the high school section of the reading test.
More FCAT scores will be released in the coming weeks and are expected to be lower than past years.
In December, the state adopted new cut scores for the first time in a decade. The change was needed this year because FCAT's math and reading exams were revised to meet more rigorous academic standards. Other changes came from the state's effort to get a federal waiver from the No Child Left Behind law and involve counting the performance of students with disabilities and those still learning English in the calculations.
Because of the changes to the test and tougher grading scale, school officials expect more Florida students to fail or do poorly. If that happens, more students will require remedial classes and school grades across the state will plummet.
Hershey said the exams reduce time devoted to teaching, which is counterproductive. The tests also put unhealthy stress on students.
"When we look at our school calendar, we see that there are only six days in the whole school year that there isn't major testing going on (in our schools). That's significant," Hershey said. "When you think about it in a child's life, you're thinking about how much time is spent testing and how it reduces the amount of time that they actually get instruction."
Standardized testing grew more controversial when federal lawmakers signed the No Child Left Behind Act a decade ago. The law required states to develop standardized tests to receive federal education funding. Many researchers have warned against using standardized test scores for high-stakes decisions, saying they are unreliable for such a purpose.
The resolution says testing has undermined state and federal accountability systems and overemphasizing standardized testing "has caused considerable collateral damage in too many schools, including narrowing the curriculum, teaching to the test, reducing love of learning, pushing students out of school, driving excellent teachers out of the profession, and undermining school climate."
Yet Hershey doesn't believe the removal of all standardized tests is the solution. Like many educators fed up with the FCAT, which they call unreliable, Hershey favors national tests.
"I think we should test and I think that we should use nationally-normed tests. We should be able to compare our kids to the rest of the state, rest of the nation and the rest of the world," Hershey said. "They have never really worked the kinks out of FCAT, whether it's the questions themselves or the grading."
One reason the state raised the standards was to prepare for education after FCAT.
By 2015, Florida plans to retire FCAT math and reading exams and replace them with new tests designed to meet new "common core" standards in those subjects.
The tests are being developed by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, a consortium of more than 20 states that won federal Race to the Top money to develop new common exams. The tests will match the "common core" standards in math and language arts that aim to set national benchmarks for what students should learn and know at each grade.
St. Lucie Superintendent Michael Lannon said Florida's move to national core curriculum standards is a way to reduce the emphasis on state standardized exams.
"Since Florida will be moving to the common core in two years we should seek world-class assessment and do away with the cost and applications of FCAT," Lannon wrote in an email to Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. "Forty-five states are online with the change to the common core curriculum, as a nation we should have common reporting devices and I think we should align with our international competitors and all use the international measures."
Pegler agreed change is needed.
He said he worried what message the state sent by lowering the writing test's passing score.
"I'm concerned that it's no longer a credible test," Pegler said. "You make everybody take the test on one scale and then you say you made a mistake. They either needed to stick by their decision and then change it next year. But to roll it back? To me it really shows that they don't know what they're doing
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2012/may/21/treasure-coast-school-boards-poised-to-join-to/
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