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Education Boss Selects New Test To Replace FCAT Next Year
March 18, 2014
Education Commissioner Pam Stewart said Monday she has selected the non-profit group American Institutes for Research to design the state’s new tests for public schools, the final step in an effort to tamp down grassroots anger over learning standards.
The $220 million contract with AIR will run for six years and will be cheaper than it would have been to go forward with a test developed by a multi-state consortium that Gov. Rick Scott ordered Stewart to back away from last year, according to the Department of Education.
“I feel very confident that it is the best choice for Florida students,” Stewart said in a conference call with reporters.
Scott’s decision last year to distance the state from the consortium — the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC — was part of an executive order meant to assuage largely conservative activists worried about the Common Core State Standards.
The Common Core standards, adopted by about four dozen states, were tweaked by the State Board of Education last month. Officials have begun referring to the revised version as the “Florida Standards.”
But AIR and another company that will work with it on the Florida tests, Data Recognition Corporation, have also helped to develop the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Like PARCC, that test is being put together by a multi-state consortium that hopes to use it to measure student learning under Common Core.
Stewart said the two systems would be separate.
“This is a platform and assessment for Florida,” she said.
Items used on the Florida tests will be field-tested in Utah, Stewart said, giving AIR the information it needs to make sure that the assessment system is working.
Florida students would begin taking the tests, which will cover language arts and math, following the 2014-15 school year. In addition to seeing how well students are doing, the tests will be used to determine school grades and help evaluate teachers.
Activists who have fought Common Core’s implementation in Florida quickly dismissed the move as far too little to address concerns about PARCC. Randy Osborne, who has lobbied against Common Core in the Legislature on behalf of the Florida Eagle Forum, said other decisions following Scott’s executive order have been like putting lipstick on a pig.
“This one, I think we forgot to get the lipstick out,” he said. ” … This is one of the worst testing consortiums you can pick, other than PARCC.”
Representatives of the anti-Common Core movement say they’ve been underwhelmed by what followed Scott’s executive order, issued in September. A series of public hearings across the state led to changes to the standards that Stewart said Monday were “significant” but have been rejected by critics.
The opposition springs largely but not exclusively from the concerns of conservative activists that Common Core would give the federal government more influence over what children learn in school. While the standards were spearheaded by a group of state officials, they have been promoted by the Obama administration.
“After all of this time, after the executive order, nothing has changed … other than the name,” said John Hallman, who lobbies for conservative groups like the Florida Campaign for Liberty and Liberty First Network.
by Brandon Larrabee, The News Service of Florida
Comments
8 Responses to “Education Boss Selects New Test To Replace FCAT Next Year”
What would happen to the public schools if all the parents who’s children are having such a hard time pulled them out for 9 weeks to home school. People complain but really we as parents need to try it. People are protesting for everything else we need to do it. It is legal and it might help our children in many ways. Home schooling is really easy now days with the internet. If noone else will help our children why are we supporting the public schools. Could you imagine the news. Look what happened when people boycotted the buses years ago. We could make a change but we are not as put together as they was in the past…..
Everyone is always commenting that the children aren’t learning in school any more. Why don’ we just go back to the curriculum from 40 years ago. It worked. Everyone knew reading, writing, and arithmetic by second grade as apposed to such a large percentage graduating without having learned these important skills. I can remember being really interested in history, and science, and enjoyable class discussions. We weren’t rushed to get to page 200. Teachers had flexibility to remain on page 24 until he or she felt like the class really gets it. And we had 6 classes, a recess, and a appetizing amount of time to relax at lunch and have an enjoyable conversation with classmates.
If you look at Utah standards it looks the same as common core just changed the name to Florida standards. What a JOKE! We test these kids to the point where they don’t want to go to school as early as elementary school. It. Is time for Florida to return to the days where one test on one day of the year does not determine if you pass or fail. Wake up Florida.
And somewhere in the background is lurking a former governor of Florida (along with his crowd of friends) who has much interest in pushing non-public education and wants to get all kids into charter and alternative schooling situations funded by the taxpayers. Some in this group may have a financial incentive to press for non-public schools. Just sayin’….
And how many children will be held back because of fcat this year ! Not right. These children are being let down again. Is it to late to take the children out and home school so they can be promoted without FCAT.
The above action is more proof that the wrong players are running the education system in Florida. The first thing that has to happen is to elect legislators that have the fate of the children first and their re-election second. We do have some good legislators in the NWF region but they carry very little weight statewide. Our local school boards must fight harder to bring back more local control. How long has it been published in any local source a piece on how a local {3 county} school board member really feels about all the testing?
Come on, Florida. Wake up. Let’s do a little research on American Institutes for Research. Their Board of Directors look like poster children for social justice advertisement. The Board Chair is a professor of social psychology at the Univ. of Michigan, Patricia Gurin, who has spent her life spreading that the poor person is poor because the rich person is rich. The Vice-Chair, Lawrence D. Bobo has openly penned during the Zimmerman and Martin situation that America is racist to its core, and these are just the top two members of the Board of Directors!
Florida has gone insane with testing. We are doing nothing but changing the name of Common Core to Florida Standards, just to appease the anti-common core crowd. As a teacher in Escambia County, I applaud Malcolm Thomas in his efforts to try to stay at the top of the game, but enough is enough. Students at the high school level are dropping out in droves, primarily because they cannot pass these liberal-based social-agenda curriculum tests, which have nothing to do with their ability to succeed in skills-based jobs. We need to go back to a dual-curriculum situation: one for those who are college material (Evidence of such in their earlier grades and determination), and the skills-based curriculum, such as mechanics, drafting, electrical, culinary. We can offer so much more than we do, but because students must pass these so-called tests, they cannot even take electives such as above. No wonder the virtual school is growing by leaps and bounds!
Why is it being field tested in Utah? Why not Florida? Wouldn’t it make sense to field test it on the students who are actually going to take it? Do we ever do anything in education that makes complete sense? Why not just use PARCC? These are the same people who developed or help develop that test. I like the “pig” guy. He makes sense to me.