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 if they make 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
If your FCAT score remains the same or varies slightly you can be seen as making a gain because the test is actually a year more advanced in difficulty and reading level. This is how this was explained to me when I used to work in Research and Evaluation for DCSB.
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