From the Orlando Sentinel, by Leslie Postal
Hagerty High School near Oviedo has a testing coordinator and color-coded testing calendar to keep track of all the exams it administers.
This school year, the testing started in September and ran through the end of May, with one test or another given on 77 of 180 school days.
For critics of Florida's school-accountability system — and its linchpin, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test — such testing calendars are exhibit A in their argument that things have gone awry.
Their simmering discontent with the state using FCAT and other standardized tests to make key education decisions rose to a boil last month when scores on Florida's annual writing test plummeted, thanks to stricter grading.
"I don't agree with the system, and I don't think it's working," said Terry Andrews, Osceola County's school superintendent, a day after the much-lower-than-expected scores were released.
"I'm not against testing, but when we test kids for 48 days out of the year, there's something wrong," Andrews said, referring to his district's testing calendar. "And when we have five third-graders who are so upset, they throw up on their tests, and we have to put them in plastic bags to grade them, it's time to look at what we're doing."
Even before the writing scores were released, however, there were signs of an increasing frustration with Florida's stable of standardized tests and how the state uses test scores to make promotion, class-assignment and graduation decisions for students, grade schools A to F and, starting this year, help judge teacher quality.
Two Florida school districts have signed a national "time-out-from-testing" resolution. The Central Florida Public School Boards Coalition has put together a white paper on the negative "ramifications" of testing, which in its view dominates too much of public education.
The Florida School Boards Association will take up the paper, and its findings, at a meeting this month.
Those upset with the system argue it puts too much stress on students and teachers, costs too much, eats up too much time and limits creativity in classrooms.
But state education leaders say the accountability plan, adopted in 1999 when Jeb Bush was governor, has improved student achievement, boosting Florida's showing on both state and national tests and increasing the number of students graduating from high school.
Florida has had a "meteoric rise" because its accountability plan measures student achievement and holds schools responsible for improving it, said Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson.
Before then, the state was a bottom feeder on most academic measures.
"Do you want to go back to that?" he said.
The state rolled out revisions to the plan this year — including tougher FCAT scoring and revised FCAT exams — to help Florida prepare for the challenging national academic standards it will move to in 2015.
That year, Florida and most other states will use the "common core" benchmarks for what students should know in language arts and math. Then Florida will replace FCAT with a new series of tests that will allow it to compare its students with youngsters across the country and the world.
"The future is also based on sound, quality assessments," Robinson said.
The short-term result may be lower test scores and more complaints, but Robinson said Florida is on the right path to prepare students for college and good jobs.
Florida's current testing arsenal includes FCAT exams in math, reading, science and writing; new end-of-course exams in algebra, biology and geometry; and other monitoring tests that aim to judge student progress and help pinpoint who needs help.
"We've hit that point when there just seems like there's too much testing," said Bill Vogel, Seminole County's outgoing superintendent.
Vogel said he has been one of the "champions of the A-Plus system," as the Bush overhaul package was dubbed, using it to drive improvement in the districts he led.
But both he and Ron Blocker, Orange County's outgoing superintendent, have said the system they once supported has morphed into a behemoth that threatens to trample its own successes.
The writing-score drop may prove to be "one of those watershed moments," Blocker said.
"I am very concerned about the public losing confidence in the accountability system," Vogel said.
Cindy Hamilton, an Orlando mother of three, said she already has.
Hamilton said she understands "accountability, and I know where Florida came from when we started on this path." But she dislikes the state's focus on tests and consequences, which in her view has forced schools to limit what is taught and discouraged good teachers.
"I don't have faith in this group of people to guide my child's education anymore," she said.
Many others questioned the system's reliability after the state released writing scores last month, and the segment of fourth-graders meeting standards dropped from 81 percent to 27 percent.
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-06-02/features/os-fcat-testing-backlash-20120602_1_standardized-tests-fcat-exams-public-school-boards-coalition
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