Lawmakers unveil bill to limit testing

Leading members of the House and Senate unveiled legislation Wednesday they said could help reduce the amount of time Florida public school students spend on standardized tests during the school year.

But lawmakers admitted the proposal (HB 773, SB 926), dubbed the “Fewer, Better Tests” legislation, would not explicitly do away with any exams.

The proposal would require the state’s language arts and math tests to be administered in the last three weeks of a school year, with the exception of the 3rd-grade reading exam.

It also requires that the scores for any tests used by local school districts be provided to teachers within a week, instead of the month currently allowed by law.

And it calls for the state to conduct a study of whether college-entrance exams are closely aligned with Florida’s high school standards, with an eye on potentially using them as at least a partial replacement for the state’s graduation tests.

The proposal comes amid a continuing stream of complaints from parents that children in Florida’s schools are overtested.

Lawmakers said they had heard the gripes.“We got the message from parents and teachers about how they feel about the testing process, the anxiety that some of their students feel and really the common-sense approach of what they need and what kind of tools they need to make sure that their children or that their students are getting a year’s worth of learning in a year’s worth of time,” said Rep. Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor.

Sprowls is set to become the speaker of the House after the 2020 elections. The legislation is backed by the influential Foundation for Florida’s Future, an organization founded by former Gov. Jeb Bush to guard his work on education accountability.

The foundation and other testing supporters have come under siege from the public pushback against testing in recent years. Still, the legislation doesn’t get rid of exams that parents, students and teachers have complained about.

“It doesn’t eliminate any tests,” Sen. Anitere Flores of Miami, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said.

She pointed out it would limit the amount of time when school districts can administer exams.

“It does reduce the testing window, but I don’t know if actually eliminates any tests,” Flores said.

Supporters said the one-week window for local tests was aimed at prompting districts to get rid of any exams that couldn’t meet that standard.

Rep. Manny Diaz Jr., R-Hialeah, said the local tests contributed more to the current backlash from parents than the state assessments, as districts try to measure students ahead of state exams.

“That’s what produced, I think, the overwhelming feeling that kids are just being overtested anywhere,” said Diaz, who chairs the House subcommittee that oversees public school spending. “A lot of those tests are local, because districts just want to see where their students are. And I don’t blame them. But, unfortunately, we have to clear the path for learning to go on.”