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Editorial: Florida gets F for test rollout

 
State leaders who insisted on prematurely bulldozing ahead with Florida’s first round of new standardized tests have given critics more ammunition: a weeklong confirmation that Florida was not prepared to administer the first Florida Standards Assessments.
State leaders who insisted on prematurely bulldozing ahead with Florida’s first round of new standardized tests have given critics more ammunition: a weeklong confirmation that Florida was not prepared to administer the first Florida Standards Assessments.
Published March 6, 2015

State leaders who insisted on prematurely bulldozing ahead with Florida's first round of new standardized tests have given critics more ammunition: a weeklong confirmation that Florida was not prepared to administer the first Florida Standards Assessments. The students' performance won't be known for months, but the state already has failed its initial test. Gov. Rick Scott, Education Commissioner Pam Stewart and the Florida Legislature should acknowledge the obvious, suspend any consequences from the test results and use this year as a painful learning experience.

That is the advice that school boards, superintendents and teachers have been providing the state for months. No student, no teacher, no school and no district should suffer the consequences of the botched rollout of this new computerized test. And suspension of any consequences should be automatic. Districts should not have to apply for a waiver as contemplated in a bill now making its way through the Senate.

Politicians who embrace school accountability must hold themselves accountable. In claiming against all evidence that the state was ready to push forward, they undermined their own case for the importance of accountability itself. Pity the poor student who was ready to sit down at a computer and take a high-stakes test only to discover that state software glitches and overloads either kept her from signing on at all, or having the computer work slowly, or watching it crash and losing her work. Stressed out, how will she perform the next time she tries to take the test? Who could reasonably argue that this will be a fair test of her knowledge of the subject at hand?

All of this is unfortunate, because accountability is a sound principle, as is the idea that Florida should embrace high standards for what its students should know before graduating from high school. It is entirely reasonable that students be tested to demonstrate their mastery of the material and that their annual learning gains be accurately measured.

But accountability doesn't work if teachers, parents and students don't buy into it, and the state's half-baked implementation of a testing system that's not ready for school time gives them no reason to embrace it. There are reasonable arguments to make about the sweep and scope of Florida's version of the Common Core, how best to test students and how much the results should affect student grades and teacher pay. But those discussions are moot until the state quits starring in its own amateur hour production.

The Senate took a meaningful step last week toward adjusting the long-term consequences of overtesting and the new Florida Standards Assessments. The Senate Education Committee approved a bill (SB 616) that modestly reduces testing and reduces the portion of a teacher's evaluation that is tied to student test performance from 50 percent to 33 percent. But that is not bold enough to address the real concerns of educators and families with nervous, frustrated students apprehensive about more difficult tests, unfamiliar technology — and an unreliable online system.

BuzzFeed, a website that is only a few years old, managed to let 41 million people judge if a dress was white and gold or blue and black — and handled 670,000 viewers at the same time. The state and its vendor, knowing the testing dates far in advance, couldn't manage a far smaller number. The state should apply the same standard to itself that it would to a third-grader who couldn't demonstrate reading comprehension. That student would be held back. For its poor performance on its own tests, the state should be held back a year, too. That means not using this year's results to evaluate anything but how the assessments themselves work, how well the state administers them and setting baselines for next year. Until Florida demonstrates mastery of the material, it should not move on to the next level.