Back in January, the Florida Department of Education warned school district leaders that the FCAT results could be delayed for a variety of factors. Officials then gave a list of dates representing the earliest that the scores would start appearing.

The first of those dates is upon us.

The FCAT Writing results, which were to come out no sooner than the week of May 5, are now due Thursday, the DOE has announced. The general public will get school, district and state numbers for the fourth, eighth and tenth graders who took the test, while parents will have to log in to fcatparentnetwork.com for individual results.

It's not the writing portion, which has seen generally rising scores for years, that has folks biting their nails, though. Heck, the state recently decided that the writing test won't even count for high school graduation after threatening for some time that it would.

Nope, it's the reading, math and science sections that can make or break schools on the edge, as well as third-graders and high school seniors whose promotion is on the line. And those scores aren't due out until, well, next week for seniors and the week after that for third-graders. That's if the department meets its marks, mind you.

And you thought with the end of session things would get dull.