Half of Florida high school students fail reading test

Yahoo News ^ | May 18, 2012 | Staff

[yoe]

Nearly half of Florida high school students failed the reading portion of the state's new toughened standardized test, education officials said on Friday.

Results this year from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test showed 52 percent of freshman students and 50 percent of sophomores scored at their grade levels.

Students in the 10th grade must pass the exam in order to eventually graduate but can retake it if they fail.

The results came days after the Florida State Board of Education voted to lower the standards needed to pass the writing part of the test, known as FCAT. The test is administered in public elementary, middle and high schools.

The board took the action in an emergency meeting when preliminary results indicated only about one-third of Florida students would have passed this year.

"We are asking more from our students and teachers than we ever have, and I am proud of their hard work," Florida Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson said in a statement.

[yoe]

"Asking more from our students and teachers than we ever have"......AND STILL FAILING AFTER BILLIONS OF DOLLARS SPENT.....ON WHAT? Unions? Teacher's Unions? Government Unions? With no accountability from these organizations what else do you expect of such waste....young minds wasted and taxpayer waste.

[Sacajaweau]

Because they’re scr**ing around on a computer and instead of reading a damn book and writing about it.

[blueunicorn6]

Just another cog in THE BIG DEMOCRAT MONEY-MAKING MACHINE!

[FrankR]

As a wise man once told me when school integration started, "We won't bring them up, they will take us down."

He was right.

[mrsmel]

He was indeed wise. Equality of condition necessarily means the lowest common denominator.

[scooby321]

The Union says it about the Children

If that is the Case

The Union can not educate our Children and School vouchers should be given to the parents.

[Tublecane]

“We are asking more from our students and teachers than we ever have, and I am proud of their hard work”

No, you’re not.

[Mpatl]

I wonder if Trayvon passed...

[mrsmel]

I have reservations about vouchers. I can see the government using them as a means to get their tentacles into the curriculum and regulation of discipline of private schools. Government never does anything which doesn’t feed itself. Their “good intentions” never fail to become the thin tip of the wedge into government interference.

[RedMDer]

Keep FR Running Let's get to Yellow!

[Rome2000]

Black Americans can be taught to read and write just as effectively as White Americans.

Communist run teachers unions operating unmolested by the GOP bluebloods at the state and federal level and a lack of prosecutions by the criminal justice system is the reason the public schools are where they are today.

Public schools must be eliminated.

[Reeses]

The Democrat's perfect campaign motto: “We won't bring us up, we will take them down.”

[rurgan]

This is just more proof that socialism(government or government schools) doesn’t work.

[FrankR]

Whether or not they “can” be taught is not the point...

[FrankR]

[Nip]

Correct me if I am wrong.

But wasn't the state wide standardized tests design to identify problems such as this? If so, then the tests have done EXACTLY what they were designed to do.

In the Panhandle of the state our failure rates were much MUCH lower no where near 50%.

One final question, since the tests were a controlled item it would be possible to link the failed tests to a student, a school, and probably teachers. Has any one read any in depth analysis of the test results? Like where the failures were concentrated, how bad the failures were (a near miss could be attributed to a bad hair day, a major failure is something else), and finally the socio-economic-racial identity of the failing students?

I guess no one wants to ask them selves the really hard questions like they just asked the students. it is so much easier and easier to change the rules than to improve the final product

[EEGator]

You can read a book on the computer. Computers are the future, better they learn young.

[CitizenM]

The results came days after the Florida State Board of Education voted to lower the standards needed to pass the writing part of the test

Lowering the standards...yep, that will help them learn! The dumbing-down of America continues. Soon it will be acceptable to be illiterate and still get into college for four more years of government assisted "education." Then we will have a country of unemployable college grads with useless degrees, no jobs, government loans that can't be paid back, and lots of condoms. Wait...looks like we are well on that track.

[PGalt]

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, PUBLIC SCHOOLS, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism. - Bastiat 1801-1850

CAPS mine

Now, are any parents suing the individual members of the teachers union for non-performance/failure?

[rurgan]

Public schools must be eliminated.

ditto that.

Public schools = government schools = government running things = socialism , which doesn't work. Amazing how many Americans support the government schools even though they are failing.