Our children need your voice now. Please tell the Senate Education Committee that the flawed FSA should not be used to grade anyone. The spring roll-out of the Florida Standards Assessment was an unmitigated disaster. The Legislature’s own the validity study cautioned against using this test to decide whether children should be retained or remediated.
Even though 35% of the FSA questions were never taught to Florida students, Commissioner Pam Stewart and lawmakers plan to use test scores to grade schools and evaluate teachers. These scores are even being used as a graduation requirement for the 10th graders who took the 2015 FSA.
There’s discussion about adding a national test such as the SAT as an alternative to the FSA, but zero talk about removing the high stakes. Changing tests is a short term fix that ignores the politically-driven policy of using a single test score to drive student grade retention, remediation, teacher evaluations and financial sanctions against districts.
Take action now. Click here to tell Sen. Legg and the Education Committee that standardized tests should be limited and used for diagnostic purposes only. Teachers, parents and students deserve to see the tests, examine the questions and understand deficits to ensure successful learning. We want our tax dollars to pay for a transparent process that puts children ahead of test and punish “Education Reform.”
Watch a live stream on the Florida Channel of the Senate Education Committee meeting, Thursday, September 17th at 1:30p.
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