ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida leaders are revamping the way students take standardized tests.
This will be the last year kids prepare for the Florida Standards Assessments (FSA).
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It’s being replaced with a new system called progress monitoring. Governor Ron DeSantis signed a measure last week that made this possible.
Morgen Peters, a student at Apopka High School, heard the announcement from her teacher on Tuesday.
“She was talking about how we would be the last group of students to take the FSA,” Peters said.
Next year, students in grades three through 10 will be required to take three exams at the beginning, middle and end of each school year.
They will receive English Language Arts and Math tests.
“Teachers have always wanted to know where kids are when they come into the classroom. They want to know how they’re progressing throughout the year and they want to know at the end of the year, did they learn what they need to learn,” Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar said.
He loves the concept of progress monitoring and believes it was the right choice, but he is dissatisfied with the execution. He said the new exams will be layered over pre-existing district progress monitoring exams.
Spar said teachers will be overwhelmed with data from test results and students will not learn efficiently.
“I think it takes away from us completely and I’ve always felt that way because they put so much pressure on students to be good test takers and they don’t really teach us all the things we need in life,” Peters said.
Spar said he would prefer the legislature put a cap on the number of state and district tests students are required to take.
“Ultimately, if we reduce testing and focus more on the teaching, our students are going to do so much better,” Spar said.
Spar said the previous method of testing was one “high-stakes” exam at the end of the year.
Florida Rep. Rene Plasencia issued the following statement in response to Spar:
“Andrew’s response is inaccurate . Districts will replace some of their assessments with ours. These 3 tests won’t be additional. He is only assuming what could happen. Also keep in mind that we already have a 5% cap in the amount of testing.
Here is why. The change to progress monitoring is something that teachers/districts have been asking for, for years. This did not originate at the state level. This change is years of collaboration between the DOE and school districts.
The procurement of progress monitoring at the state level will create consistency and uniformity statewide allowing for districts to learn from other districts successes and making it easier for kids who move into a different district. It will also save districts millions of dollars, since this is designed to replace districts assessment. The districts themselves have said this.
Please keep in mind that there is a stark difference between saying that teachers want something as opposed to the teachers union wanting something. This is not a criticism of the union. I was a union member myself for 15 years.
What the union wanted was for us to prohibit the use of any other computer based testing by the districts. We went back and forth with deciding whether to include that language in the bill and ultimately decided against it.
Teachers and districts have always asked to be trusted to make the right choices for their students. By prohibiting the use of any other computer based diagnostic we would have not been trusting them to what is right for students.
There is no controversy to this bill. The union is upset because they wanted to use this bill as a vehicle to make changes they’ve been wanting for years. We were committed to keeping this bill clean because the changes are so important and beneficial to our students abs teachers.”
Florida Rep. Rene Plasencia
With the transition to three tests annually, he said the state department of education hopes school districts will get rid of standardized tests in the next couple of years.