Posted on 05/16/2012 9:09:37 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
After conceding that poor communication with teachers could have contributed to the unprecedented plunge in Florida students’ writing scores this year, the state Board of Education voted Tuesday to lower the passing mark for the test.
Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson defended the decision against critics who said it was a quick fix for bad results on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT. He said changing the test’s passing score to a 3 from a 4 (out of 6) “corrected the process.”
“The results still stand,” he said.
Just 27 percent of fourth-graders statewide earned a 4 or better on the writing FCAT, a steep decline from last year’s 81 percent. Eighth- and 10th-graders showed similar drops.
The news sparked widespread concern and a dramatic response, with more than 800 parents, teachers and school officials dialing into an emergency conference call held Tuesday by the state board.
Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said after Tuesday’s decision, “The State Board of Education should be thanked for taking on this matter in such a direct, forthright manner.”
....Switching to a 3 puts scores on par with last year’s results. Final results for schools and districts could be released by the end of the week, state officials said.
Robinson acknowledged Tuesday that teachers were not adequately prepared for how strictly the tests were going to be graded this year, and said he “realized that overnight students didn’t just become bad writers.”
But Robinson also warned Tuesday that substantial declines were coming for scores on the state’s high-stakes reading and math tests.
...“I can tell you there’s going to be a big wake-up moment,” Robinson said.
Some state leaders expressed concern about the writing results......
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
How long has this policy been in effect, even “de facto” without being enforced?
They’re looking at a demographic collapse within a couple of generations.
:: How could they not be prepared? ::
they were caught up teaching “American Social Issues” and “Human Sexual Activity” classes.
Oh, well that’s alright then.
The kids really need those "Life skills”.
Much more important than being able to read, right and do their sums.
Who needs math...I’m a statistician!
As the Chinese get older they get worse. When my husband was working towards his doctorate, he found dissertations that the Chinese had copied almost word for word or equation for equation, from Americans. They did not build on the work, nor did they add to the topic. He even found the work of a former professor of his that they had plagiarized.
If they believe they won’t be caught, the Chinese have no problem stealing other people’s work. Stealing other people’s doctoral work is a very serious offense in this country but in China, not so much. So they can keep their laughter to themselves.
I wonder if these new results have anything to do with all of the teacher cheating scandals lately. Maybe the real reason the Florida scores dropped dramatically is that the Florida teachers, for the first time, STOPPED cheating to avoid getting caught. The actual performance levels of the students might be the same now as before.
What’s the problem? As long as kids are able to send and read text messages, the schools have done their jobs, especially considering the paltry amount of tax money they have to work with.
I should add that all of Florida's teachers should have to score 80% or better on the test before they're allowed to teach the subject matter it covers -- or teach at all for that matter.
“The Chinese now have an entire generation of men who are not married.”
This is the Chinese fighting force for world war 3. Chinese males, who have no one to return from war to, are more brutal. Especially when we send our women out to fight them.
I’m in two minds over this... standardized tests are often normalized because of the inherent randomness of the relative difficulties of year X’s test vs. year Y (one test is almost certainly “easier” than the other, despite efforts made in advance to prevent that).
At the same time, this move appears completely reactionary to gloss over unexpected results. The very narrow scoring scale has a lot to do with that — if this were out of 1000 points, for example, a shift of “pass” from say 700 to 670 seems a lot more reasonable than moving it from 4/6 to 3/6.
Heartily in complete agreement. If FL-kids got too smart, just who the hell could they talk to in that benighted tropical heckhole anyway?
Whatever. These are the hanging chad people of the future.
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