In 1977, Florida became the first state in the U.S. to use a standardized test for high school graduation. Two decades later, the FCAT was introduced in 1998, the year before Gov. Jeb Bush was elected. Education reform based on standardized tests was at the forefront of Bush’s tenure as governor. The Florida Legislature in 1999 adopted Bush’s A-plus Plan for Education, a blueprint for school reform with accountability as its primary focus. And the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test was front and center in that plan. The stakes went up — for everyone. Schools were rated A to F. The attention focused on two grades: third and 10th. Schools that earned an F would see their students be eligible for taxpayer- funded vouchers, which parents could use to send their children to private schools with public money. Schools that received an A got bonus funding; F schools were penalized, a practice that critics said rewarded schools that were already doing well and punished schools that needed more resources. None of the previous standardized tests had the strong accountability measures like the kind ushered in with the high-stakes FCAT, says Malcolm Thomas, superintendent of Escambia County schools. “It was a game-changer for education,” says Thomas. “We’re better in Florida because of it.” It’s hard to find anyone, from educators to parents to lawmakers, who questions the need to have a way to measure how well students are performing in school. But for some, the FCAT went beyond the scope of providing a blueprint of student proficiency. Critics say its high-stakes nature contributed to “teaching to the test” and preventing teachers from getting to valuable subject matter that wasn’t tested by the state assessment. A good thing about the FCAT is that it gave teachers, schools and districts a sense of commonality and accountability, said Anne Copenhaver, who has math, reading and gifted students at various schools in Escambia County. She is in her fourth year helping first-year teachers in the Successful Teachers Assisting Rising Teachers (START) program. “If I am teaching something in Pensacola, sixth-graders in Jacksonville are teaching the same thing,” Copenhaver said. However, the FCAT’s negative impact labeled students and made them feel inferior, Copenhaver said. “Then, we started saying, ‘This is a 1, and this is a 2,’ labeling students,” she said. “My students used to say you had to make at least a 3 or you’re going to be in a ‘bump’ class. I asked, ‘What does that mean?’ They said it one of those stupid classes.” Now the FCAT has been replaced. The Florida Standards Assessment is the new blueprint, the state-sanctioned standardized test that will be used to measure student progress, gauge teacher effectiveness and rate public schools.

Local Ideas

• Support the administration of the Florida Standards Assessments this year and use the results as a baseline for measuring progress. The state’s accountability system relies on both learning gains as well as performance. In the first year of FSA administration, there will be no learning gains and therefore will compromise its ability to drive accountability.
• Freeze school grades through 2015-2016 to ensure two consecutive years of reliable and valid data.
• Eliminate the requirement for the 11th-grade English and Language Arts Florida Standards Assessment and all new End-of-Course exams.
• Allow for the determination of teacher evaluations based on local data.
• Ensure adequate technology readiness for the statewide computer-based testing.

FCAT era ends

How students coped under FCAT

Moving the bar

Local scores

Additional Reading:

Pensacola Education Report 2015, Part 1

The miseducation of the FCAT generation

Parents find a way to help their children learn

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