New Voices: Florida students should take national tests.
Two years ago, the Seminole County School Board proposed that Florida’s statewide standardized tests be replaced with tests available nationally, like the SAT and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. The recently released results for the high-school graduating class of 2017 on the ACT — the college entrance exam taken by more students than the SAT — show why the “Seminole Solution” (as Seminole County’s proposal was dubbed then) is still a great idea.
In Florida, 73 percent of the high-school graduating class of 2017 took the ACT. There were 24 other states in which 73 percent or more of the high-school grads took the ACT, including 17 where the states arranged for every student to take the exam. By comparing Florida’s results to those of the other 24 states, we can see in a transparent way what Florida’s high-school graduates do well, and what they do less well.
We start with reading, which has been the primary subject of emphasis for Florida’s publicschool students since Gov. Jeb Bush instituted the A+ Plan in 1999. Among the 25 states in which 73 percent or more of the 2017 high-school graduates took the ACT, Florida’s average score on the reading section placed eighth — a credible performance. The states that beat Florida in reading included Ohio, Kansas, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois and Colorado.
Unfortunately, Florida did not perform nearly so well in the other subjects covered by the ACT. In math, our state’s average score placed 14th among the 25 states. In the “English” test section, which deals with writing skills, Florida was 15th. In science, our state placed 20th, ahead of only Hawaii, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi and Nevada. Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Tennessee and Kentucky were among the states with higher average scores than Florida in science.
This is important information for parents, voters and policymakers — that Florida’s highschool students are doing pretty well in reading, and mediocre or worse in the other subjects covered by the ACT. But you will not hear this from the Florida Department of Education because our state is committed to maintaining its own isolated testing system that makes it difficult to compare Florida with other states.
At the time that the Seminole County School Board made its proposal two years ago, Commissioner of Education Pam Stewart dismissed the proposal by saying that national tests like the SAT and ACT do not focus precisely enough on Florida’s own standards. However, this year the Legislature directed the commissioner to contract for a study of whether the ACT or SAT could be allowed to substitute for the state’s own standardized tests in Algebra 1 and 10th grade English Language Arts. The report will be delivered to the Legislature in time for the beginning of the 2018 session.
The complaint that the SAT and ACT do not precisely enough match Florida’s own standards is a bit disingenuous. Ten years ago, I was a member of the committee that wrote new science standards for Florida. The committee proposed science standards for the high-school level that covered physical sciences, Earth/space sciences, and life sciences. The state Board of Education approved them all.
Yet, the state decided that it would test only biology, effectively making the physical and Earth/space sciences optional subjects. In short, Florida’s highschool science exam ignores two-thirds of the state’s highschool science standards.
The ACT science section, on which Florida’s students are performing so poorly, uses content from all three science fields — physical science, Earth/space science and life science. Does Florida’s exclusive focus on life science at the high-school level partly account for the poor performance of Florida’s students on the ACT science section?
If the state finally adopts the suggestion of the Seminole County School Board, we will start asking hard questions like that — as we should have been doing all along.
Our state is committed to maintaining its own isolated testing system that makes it difficult to compare Florida with other states.