State waives school testing rules
Education commissioner issues order, which allows for graduations and promotions
Florida will allow high school seniors to graduate, third graders to be promoted and middle school and high school students to earn grades in certain courses even if they skip state exams or do poorly on them, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran ruled in an order signed Friday.
Parents and educators have been clamoring for the state to take such action. Because of the pandemic, more than 30% of Florida’s public school students are studying online from home.
Many parents are upset the state wants to bring them in for testing. Others argue even students on campus have faced disruptions and hardships this year and highstakes testing doesn’t make sense.
“With this order our students will be able to focus on learning from this point on and not be concerned with repercussions from any academic struggles due to the pandemic,” said Burt Miller, who serves as president of the Broward Council of PTA’s and has a daughter attending Monarch High in Coconut Creek. “Teachers, schools and districts will have what they need to process, review and evaluate without the pressure of punitive consequences.”
Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers Union, praised the move as “something we’ve been waiting for. A very good decision.” Fusco opposes high-stakes testing any year, but this year in particular, “there are so many exceptional circumstances due to COVID. There’s no reason to put an extra burden on students.”
The order issued Friday allows school districts to decide for
themselves whether they want to opt in to school grades. Schools that get A’s would be eligible for extra money, but those that get D’s and F’s could face increased state oversight.
“I’m going to work on the district to make sure we don’t opt in,” Fusco said. “We didn’t need school grades before.”
On Facebook groups, in interviews and in a state survey, many parents shared similar views, calling high-stakes testing in the middle of a pandemic “ridiculous,” “not fair” and a potential way to spread COVID-19.
Donald Fennoy, superintendent for Palm Beach County schools, said it’s important for parents to know the order does not allow students to opt out of testing, even though there will be no state-mandated penalties for poor results.
“While I applaud today’s decision, I appeal to parents to adhere to state rules and have their children participate in these state-required assessments,” he said. “They play an important role in helping school leaders identify students who need additional support and allow for educators to modify their instruction and delivery to meet the needs of each student.”
Corcoran, who has said he wanted all students, if possible, to test this year, conceded in his order that fewer youngsters likely would sit for the exams this spring than in the past. Testing began Monday.
His order said that “each student has individualized circumstances and challenges caused by the pandemic” and that “local school districts, in consultation with parents, are in the best position to evaluate the academic progress of each student and then to make individualized decisions related to student progression and graduation in keeping with the best interest of each child.”
Broward Superintendent Robert Runcie said in a statement, “We welcome the flexibility that [the order] provides and are carefully examining the components to determine the impact of this order to be able to provide guidance for our students, parents and schools.”
Corcoran’s order waives three key testing rules: one that demands third graders, with some exceptions, pass the state reading test to move on to fourth grade; another that requires 12th graders to pass the state’s algebra 1 exam and its 10th grade language arts exam to earn a diploma; and a third that counts scores on state exams in certain middle and high school courses — algebra, biology, civics, geometry and U.S. history — for 30% of final class grades.
This year, school districts will be able to make promotion, graduation and grade decisions based on classwork and local tests, Jacob Oliva, chancellor of K-12 education for the Florida Department of Education, said on a call with superintendents Friday.
“Those decisions will handled at the local level,” Oliva said.
Superintendents and school board members had also urged the state to waive the consequences of testing for this year and to drop A-to-F school grades for 2021.
“We’ve received today’s executive order with a sigh of relief and celebration over the level of compassion and flexibility that Commissioner Corcoran has extended to the entire state of Florida,” said Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of MiamiDade schools.
The state canceled its annual battery of standardized tests — both the Florida Standards Assessments, or FSA, its state science tests and its end-of-course exams — last spring when public schools shut down because of the pandemic.
But when schools opened in August, testing resumed, though the number of exams given in the fall and winter is typically dwarfed by those taken in the spring, and it’s the spring exam scores that play key roles in many academic decisions.
Corcoran and his staff said testing could be done safely on campus — and state law does not allow for testing from students’ homes — and said the exams would provide important information about what students had learned, or failed to grasp, in a school year upended by the pandemic.
But he also said he would use “compassion and grace” in deciding how to use the scores.
The order also provides an extension of the Bright Futures scholarship deadlines, giving more time to seniors who need to earn qualifying scores on the ACT or SAT. They will now have until Dec. 1 instead of June 30 to secure those scores to earn the college scholarships.