Posted on 03/03/2015 3:23:54 AM PST by UMCRevMom@aol.com
More students are expected to flunk. School districts warn they might not be ready. And parents are threatening to boycott.
Ready or not — and many school boards, parents and teachers have been screaming to lawmakers that they’re not — Florida will roll out its new, much debated standardized tests on Monday.
The Florida Department of Education is forging ahead, even with a host of unknowns hanging in the air. Students, for instance, don’t even know what score they’ll have to make to pass.
“We need to question if we have gone too far, too fast,” Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho recently told a Florida Senate education committee.
The new tests are called the Florida Standards Assessments, or FSA. They replace the also-controversial Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, commonly known as FCAT. The state developed the new tests after adopting new education standards.
Students in grades 4 through 10 will begin taking the writing portion of the test on Monday. Between March 23 and May 8, kids in grades 3 through 10 will take an English language arts test, and students in grades 3 through 8 will be given a math test. The tests last from one to two hours.
To build the FSAs, Florida bought questions that were field-tested in Utah, where student demographics are much different. More than half of the students who took the Utah tests failed, and that state is now debating whether to dump their test.
Students struggled because the new standards are much harder and the tests are much different.
For example, under the FCAT writing tests, students responded to a prompt that was a few sentences long. Now, students will have to read a passage — sometimes multiple passages — and respond.
Kaitlyn Pujols, a sophomore at Miami Lakes Educational Center, said the new tests require students to know more vocabulary. During a practice run at her school, some students struggled with reading the longer passages.
“There were students who had the class their last period, and even though the time was over, they were still in the library taking the last test,” she said.
Another big difference is that many of the tests will be administered on computers, which could pose technical challenges for both students and school districts.
Students will be required to drag and drop items using a mouse and type up essays using a keyboard, potentially giving an advantage to kids who are more computer literate or have better access to technology.
“That’s an equity issue,” said Gisela Feild, Miami-Dade’s administrative director of assessment, research and data analysis.
The computer component is also a major problem for some school districts who have a limited number of machines or bad Internet connections. Superintendents across the state have warned they may not be ready, or may not be able to complete testing within the required time frame.
Miami-Dade says it has enough computers and its technology will hold up — but it faces another problem. Computer labs won’t be available for teaching and learning for weeks at a time while testing is taking place.
“Labs that are normally used for instructional purposes have to be purposed for testing,” said Sally Shay, district director for assessment research and data analysis.
Also, no one will know whether the test provider’s servers will be able to handle the traffic as kids all across the state go online to access the exams. Last year, testing was thrown into chaos because of computer glitches. That involved a different testing company, though.
A lot rides on these tests. Third-grade students can be retained if they fail. High school students can be denied a diploma. And teachers, whose evaluations depend on test scores, can be axed.
Only the schools themselves have been given a slight reprieve. The consequences of their state-issued grades, based on test scores, will be frozen for a year.
School districts and teachers unions have asked for at least another year until scores are factored into such high-stakes decisions. They want to make sure the tests are reliable and fair. That usually means comparing results with a base year. But since this is the first year of the test, no baseline data exist.
“It’s bad all around,” said United Teachers of Dade President Fedrick Ingram.
With such credibility issues, and the high-stakes involved, some parents are abandoning the tests in a nationwide movement. These “Opt-Out” parents have coached their kids to simply not answer any questions on the tests.
They are up against Florida Education Commissioner Pam Stewart, who warned in a recent letter: “State law requires students to participate in the state assessment system.”
“Parents are afraid. This is a big thing that they’re doing,” said Suzette Lopez, a parent who helps run the Opt-Out group in Miami-Dade. “They’re just doing it to protect their kids because there are just so many unknowns.”
Some school districts are making accommodations for kids who refuse to take the test. In Brevard County, kids will be allowed to leave the testing room. In Lee County, students will be allowed to read during the the testing period. In Miami-Dade, students will have to sit in the same room and wait out the testing period, Feild said.
Kids who fail or don’t take the FSA have other options. They can be promoted to the next grade based on a portfolio of work or by passing certain other tests. But they also may be targeted for remedial courses.
It’s unclear how many parents will follow through on their promises to boycott, and the movement in Miami-Dade isn’t as strong as it is in other Florida districts. But Lopez said the days before the test have prompted a flurry of calls from parents.
“There’s a lot of noise and a lot of push. Whether or no they do it is another thing,” she said.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article11858981.html#storylink=cpy
Testing the tests.
When I see massive teacher resistance to such tests (as we’ve had recently here in NJ), I suspect they fear the scales will fall from parents’ eyes regarding the “education” their children are receiving. They’ve been sending home glowing report cards for decades, and the students don’t know very much. My children’s classes have received “extra credit” for bringing cans in for food drives, attending “multicultural night” (for English extra credit?), etc.; if these tests expose the lies, the sooner the better.
Whatever happened to the Scantron sheets?
We used to receive the test booklet (with instructions NOT to write in it), scratch paper, pencils, and Scantron sheets. The only computer resources required were to run the Scantron sheets through the optical reader and analyze the test results.
Computer-based testing seems unnecessary and expensive. Plus, I wonder about the quality of the test. The quality of education was much higher back in the Scantron days and before schools even had computers. (And the quality of education in many European countries was miles ahead of American education—but that’s another topic.)
If they are credibly objective... which is the rub. We don’t need to be bowing to airy fairy Common Core criteria.
If it is something that will compare our students from region to region, or against other countries’ students, then let’s do it. Grade inflation is rampant (and I’m not talking about the outright cheating by teachers); why do you think this happens? They are hiding the truth while here in NJ, public school teachers are our upper middle class.
No worry folks, they just teach to the test. Like they do in Memphis. Which is why Memphis has the worse schools in TN.
I remember the Scantrons as well, which was a multiple choice sheet.
Always thought they had to “fill a quota” on what percentage of kids got good and bad grades. I’d get great grades in the first semester, usually terrible before Christmas, somewhat better or worse in spring and back up to “really great” or mediocre but passing by the end of classes.
Even though my parents wanted me to “study harder” I was just basically doing the same old thing and the same amount of work and study I had been doing all year, yet there was almost always “the dip” pattern to how I was graded.
As long as it isn’t gimmick based, so as to give better scores to those familiar with gimmicks.
I worked with a woman whose kids went to an elementary school right by our work and she would pick them up and bring them over for about an hour until she got off from work. Her daughter was in third grade. One day I asked her what they did in school that day. She said they learned how to recycle pumpkins. She could barely read but she knew how to recycle a pumpkin.
“Students will be required to drag and drop items using a mouse and type up essays using a keyboard, potentially giving an advantage to kids who are more computer literate or have better access to technology.
“That’s an equity issue,” said Gisela Feild, Miami-Dade’s administrative director of assessment, research and data analysis.”
Broward elementary schools receive new laptops
3,200 laptops given to 27 schools
http://www.local10.com/news/broward-elementary-schools-receive-new-laptops/21465736
I don’t think these will give better scores to anyone; here in NJ teachers are strongly opposed to it. As they are enemies of the taxpayers and their children, it makes me wonder why?
I think when parents realize how poorly their children understand reading, writing, and arithmetic they will be outraged. In my children’s schools, if you aren’t in advanced classes (which would be “regular” classes to anyone over thirty), you’ve already been written off. The serious teachers and students are “advanced”, and nobody else gets much of an education.
One of my sons played sports, and stopped after one year because he couldn’t balance the homework with the practices/games. I asked how the other kids did it, and he said they had much less homework because they weren’t in advanced classes...
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