Education chief: 8th-grade civics test OK

Florida school districts that delayed enrollment in a required civics course for some middle school students did nothing wrong — and may have made an “educationally sound” decision for those youngsters, said Education Commissioner Pam Stewart.

Stewart shared her views in a letter sent to six Republican lawmakers, who last week accused three school districts — those in Duval, Manatee and Polk counties — of trying to “game” Florida’s school grading system with “dishonest and unethical practices.”

Stewart said in her letter Tuesday that she found no evidence of wrongdoing or any attempt to manipulate the state’s A-to-F school grading system.

The lawmakers, who made their accusations in a letter to Stewart on June 28, said they suspected the districts had kept some seventh-graders from taking civics in an effort to boost test scores on Florida’s end-of-course civics exam and to improve schools’ Ato-F grades from the state. The three districts had far fewer students take the civics exam this year than last and then saw scores on those exams improve.

District administrators said that was because they decided to have more students wait until eighth grade to take the class that had traditionally been viewed as one for seventh-graders.

That is an acceptable decision, Stewart wrote, noting that Florida law does not require students to take civics, and the state civics exam, in a specific grade but at some point during middle school.

In recent years, some districts have decided students would do better waiting until eighth grade before tackling the course. That delay gives them more time to improve reading skills and to learn prerequisite social studies lessons, boosting their chances of civics success a year later.

Switching civics from seventh to eighth grade can mean a oneyear drop in the number of students who take the civics test, Stewart wrote, but the next year the number of test takers returns to “historical levels.”

The Osceola County school district, for example, began that enrollment shift in 2015, and saw a drop in test takers in 2016. Now the numbers are back up — and the percentage of students passing the exam is, too, Stewart said.

“Data we have from other districts indicates that in some cases, delaying the year civics course is taken in middle school can result in more students passing the exam, and, thus, can be an educationally sound decision.”

The initial complaint about civics enrollment came from Bridget Ziegler, chairwoman of the Sarasota County School Board and president of the Florida Coalition of School Board members.

Though Ziegler’s news release mentioned only Duval, Manatee and Polk as places where the coalition had found “troubling signs of school grade inflation,” Stewart’s letter noted that Sarasota schools had made a similar switch in 2016.

That meant that in 2017, Sarasota had a small number of students — presumably some of its best — take the civics exam and had a very high passing rate. This year, far more students took the test and the passing rate dropped.

Stewart added, “We do not have any evidence that the districts you have listed have done anything that is in violation of the law or improperly manipulated the accountability system.”