The tests were administered previous year, and most districts have already used other factors to determine if students should move on.
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Data made public by the FLDOE divided student performance statewide into four categories called quartiles, ranking from bottom to top.
The percentage of students passing the Florida Standards Assessment, end-of-course and other statewide exams, however, will be calculated and reported.
This is the first year for the exam, which replaced the controversial FCAT exam.
Earlier this year, the Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott smartly exempted students from high-stakes decisions – such as whether to be advanced a grade – based exclusively on the 2015 FSA results.
“We’re setting this thing up to fail… and we’re not willing to face that”, he said. The administration of the new exams was marred by severe technological problems, frustrating superintendents, teachers and students.
They add that when faced with similar problems, at least seven states have changed their accountability systems to lessen the blow of negative consequences for their schools.
The Department of Education reviewed the independent study before it was publicly released, put a spin on the report touting the validity of the new standardized test and blamed the computer testing woes on a cyberattack.
In recent years, school reformers have added new stakes to the test scores; now they are used to evaluate educators in a process known as “value-added measurement”, a method that assessment experts have warned against using for such high-stakes purposes.
The Clay County school district said it also doesn’t believe the FSA is a reliable measurement and said it wants the state to deregulate public education. As an illustration of how nonsensical the VAM process in Florida can be, one teacher in Florida told his school board this year how highest performing students actually harmed his evaluation. Parents can expect more detailed scores for their students in October.
No one is sure what that means for the Manatee School District, because the state sent the district its raw scores without reporting the achievement levels.
The data from the School District also looks at each grade’s performance on the FSA math and English language arts test. All grade levels rose in rank except ninth grade, which went down three spots on the FSA English. Last week, they urged the state not use the test results.
“I am just glad all the hard work paid off. We really did a good job of implementing Common Core standards and we stuck to it”, said Tammy Ferguson, principal and director of the two FAU schools.
But that reasoning has met with strong criticism, most recently from the state’s school superintendents.
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But state legislators, the governor and education officials must be accountable, too, when their evaluation regime doesn’t meet the high standards they seek to impose. Politics likewise spoiled introduction of the new Florida Standards Assessments – which were so rushed the state revamped a test bought from Utah instead of developing its own.
