Today is a Huge Day for Accountability in Florida

The State Board of Education completed a marathon meeting today, culminating in a 6-1 vote to accept Education Commissioner Pam Stewart's cut-score recommendation for assigning school letter grades.

The state board had expressed concerns about accepting these recommendations, as several members stated they felt the cut scores should be more in line with NAEP scores. This sentiment was echoed by business organizations including the Florida Council of 100.

In the end, after a slew of Superintendents from around the state implored the board to accept the recommendation of the commissioner, which would in turn assure these superintendents that their district's school grades would not be impacted significantly, the vote was taken and the board voted to take the staff recommendation on cut scores.

Because of this, the various district's school grades, released late last month in simulations based upon Pam Stewart's cut score recommendation, will ultimately align with the simulations.

The Tampa Bay Times' Jeff Solocheck did a great piece on the meeting, here

We Owe it to Our Students to be Honest With Them

There is no doubt Florida has been bold with its education policies over the last 15 years, and we can all agree Florida’s students have made tremendous strides in this same time period.  For this, we are all thankful and proud.

Now our state is facing a huge choice with respect to the way it measures and defines student subject-area proficiency.

If handled the wrong way, Florida will veer from its path of progress for all students.  And the time to speak up about this problem is now!

The issue is how to set “cut scores”, which are the scores Florida education officials establish to define student proficiency on state-administered tests.

Currently, there is a troubling disconnect between what Florida defines as proficient and what the Nation’s Report Card and dozens of other states define as proficient.

The State of Florida is saying more students are proficient than what is being reported on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), considered the gold standard.

As a vivid example:  recent comparisons of Florida’s 8^th grade reading scores and these same students’ national test scores showed that  56% of Florida’s 8^th graders scored proficient in reading on the state’s assessment, whereas only 33% of these same students tested proficient in reading upon completing the national assessment (NAEP). 

This gap of 23 percentage points is troubling; it is strong evidence that Florida has had too low a bar on setting of proficiency standards. 

If we don’t raise our proficiency expectations, many will see this as a continuance of widespread social promotion, where students move on from one grade to the next without mastering grade level material…only to find out later – taking remedial courses in college, being unprepared for workplace arithmetic, or not passing military entrance exams – that they were simply shuffled along throughout their public school years.

Entrenched special interests, bureaucrats, administrators, some politicians, and various other guardians of the system want to keep cut scores artificially low so the general public won’t get 

Reaction to the FSA Validation Study is Predictable....

The independent study commissioned by the legislature to assess the validity of the FSA has been completed.  The study concluded that, overall, the FSA is a valid instrument to measure student progress on learing the Florida Standards.

Now come the reactions to the study.



Predictably, the legislature is pleased and will move forward with directing DOE to utilize last year's grades to assign letter grades and utilize the data from the tests as a part of teacher evaluations.  The standardized testing contract in Florida was a huge expenditure and the poor PR generated by the complete train-wreck of testing debacles and results delays over the last several years has infuriated the legislature.

The Florida Association of District Superintendents of Schools, meanwhile, is wary of the results and in an email blast to districts urged caution and restraint in using the data.

The Florida Coalition of School Board Members believe that there is too much testing overall, and that the appropriate resolution to this problem is to implement the "Sunshine Solution" which balances the need for assessment for accountability (utilizing time tested, existing norm-referenced assessments) with the need to reduce lost classroom learning time to test administration and preparation.

Other organizations and districts individually have their own various opinions on the subject; some districts, like Escambia County, won't get behind Dr. Walt Griffin's plan to fix Florida's testing woes--yet these same districts like Escambia won't say precisely why or what they dislike about Dr. Griffin's plan.  It appears some districts won't embrace the solution because they did not develop it "themselves."  Yes, pride of authorship becomes an unspoken yet apparent reason why many will not embrace a common-sense solution.  Some things are clear, though:

Some stakeholders (Unions) will find fault with any standardized testing that is used, to any degree, to help assess teacher performance.

Other stakeholders (Superintendents) talk about accountability yet they do not necessarily embrace a common solution to allow for grading of school and/or district performance.

This might sound sarcastic or jaded (or both) but I'm convinced there are administrators and others  throughout the state that would love nothing more than if we would just give up every statewide assessment and just go back to the days before accountability---knowing that this would lead to a regression in Florida public school systems.  Some just want to let things be, these are the "trust us and give us more money, we got this" set....

Meanwhile, the parents I speak with want less testing overall, good teachers, school choice--because they want to send their children to the best public school available--and less testing drama.

I happen to think the parents have it right and more people should listen to what they want.

The Seminole Solution

Dr. Walt Griffin, Superintendent of Seminole County Schools, has sent an intelligent, common-sense proposal to the Florida Department of Education.  His simple plan/solution to Florida's continuing standardized testing problems is documented in his letter below.

The letter with a very intelligent, common-sense solution, now being coined the "Seminole Solution" was answered within a week by Education Chancellor Pam Stewart, who politely nixes the plan saying the standardized tests Seminole County proposes in the Seminole Solution "do not measure the state specific Florida Standards."  

I think the response was weak, and I think the average Floridian just wants us to use common-sense, previously time-tested and trusted norm referenced tests. We need to be more efficient, more practical, and less parochial, in my opinion.  Otherwise, the "Opt-Out" groups will only continue to grow....and they will be right in wanting to opt out based upon Florida's horrific track-record on test-administration over the last few years!

Pam Stewart's response....