Plan to delay new Fla. test, score rules

Florida students who can’t pass the two state tests needed for graduation won’t have to meet new requirements to earn a diploma for several more years, under a revamped proposal released late last week.

The new plan means the tougher rules wouldn’t kick in until the class of 2022 — currently in the eighth grade — is ready to graduate.

The Florida Department of Education last month proposed new tests and higher scores for students who couldn’t pass Florida’s algebra and language arts tests and were using alternative exams to graduate. The department suggested the new rules be in force by Aug. 1 and apply to anyone who hadn’t yet graduated or met the old require-

ments by that date.

That proposal alarmed educators across Florida, as they feared it would prevent some students from graduating and argued it was unfair to change the rules for students already in high school. Many shared those concerns with the department, which is taking feedback on its website.

“With very little notice, this group is held to a different standard,” said Melissa DeJarlais, director of accountability for the Lake County school district, adding that graduation requirements shouldn’t be a “moving target.”

More than 35,000 students in the class of 2017 graduated using the alternative exams, education department figures show. That’s about 20 percent of the more than 168,000 teenagers who earned diplomas last spring and summer.

The Orange County school district estimated more than 800 teenagers who would have marched at commencement next year wouldn’t under the new rules, with the district’s graduation rate falling 6 percentage points.

“That’s a lot of students,” said Brandon McKelvey, the associate superintendent over school accountability.

The change released Friday proposed the tougher rules be phased in, with students who start ninth grade in August the first that must meet them. That is an improvement, McKelvey and others said, though they remain worried the changes in alternative tests — and the higher passing scores — will keep some students from graduating in the years ahead.

“This is still a change we’re very concerned about,” he said.

Under Florida law, students need to pass the state’s algebra 1 end-ofcourse exam and the 10th-grade language arts exam to earn a diploma. If they cannot pass those, they have been able to use certain scores on the ACT or SAT or the state’s Post Secondary Education Readiness Test, dubbed P.E.R.T., as alternatives.

Now the education department wants to eliminate P.E.R.T. as an option and require higher ACT or SAT scores to graduate once current ninth graders graduate in 2021.

The State Board of Education, which has final say, is expected to vote on the proposal May 16.

Central Florida educators said scrapping P.E.R.T. will get rid of an exam that has helped students to graduate and also is inexpensive for schools to administer, with a price per student of less than $1. In recent years, about 30 percent of Orange’s graduates have used P.E.R.T. in place of a passing score on the algebra 1 exam, McKelvey said.

The ACT and SAT, college admission exams owned by private firms, are more expensive — about $20 if a group price is negotiated and about $60 for those who register on their own.

The education department has proposed the change because several years ago Florida adopted new academic standards and a new series of tests, the Florida Standards Assessments. State law required the department to re-evaluate what alternative tests and scores could be used. But the state had to wait a few years before it had enough data to compare performance on the FSA with that on other exams and suggest new scores.

The Buros Center for Testing at University of Nebraska — which has served as Florida’s testing consultant for more than a decade — along with a group of Florida teachers and administrators helped the department devise the recommendations.

The group determined that P.E.R.T didn’t cover the “rigor, complexity and breadth” of Florida’s math standards and recommended it not be used “to satisfy any assessment requirements for high school graduation,” the department said.

It proposed that instead of a P.E.R.T. score, students who failed the algebra 1 exam would need qualifying scores on the math sections of the ACT or SAT. They would need a 16 out of 36 on ACT and a 420 out of 800 on SAT.

It also recommended that students who failed the FSA language arts exam given in 10th grade post higher scores on the national tests. Students would need a 480 on the new SAT reading and an average of 18 on the ACT reading and English sections, under the proposal.

Current rules require a 430 on SAT reading, based on the old SAT exam that was replaced in 2016. A 430 on that exam is equivalent to a 460 on the new SAT, according to the College Board.

Students would need an average score of 18 on ACT reading and English. The current rule is a 19 on ACT reading. The proposal is a tougher standard because most students do better on the ACT reading section than on the English section, so earning an 18 as an average on both likely would be harder for students than a 19 just on reading.