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Florida Test Reform: What Might We Expect from the legislature?
There will be hearings in the legislature about reforms to Florida’s state-wide testing. The Seminole County school district is leading a movement to replace the FSA at least for high school graduation. Senators Gaetz and Legg have made public statements about the need for reform.
What can we realistically expect?
FSA Score Results: What Parent’s Should Know
I have reviewed the FSA validity study and the response by the Florida Department of Education. It boils down to a few key issues:
- 1. Students should be held harmless from promotion, graduation and placement in remediation courses.
- 2. Scores based on FSA standards should be delayed until independent reviews of the alignment of test questions with state standards is completed.
- 3. If close alignment with standards is not meaningful (as with the Utah test questions), then less expensive, nationally normed tests should be considered.
- 4. Performance standards should not be set until the alignment of item complexity with performance standards is resolved. Questions that are too complex or too simple for a given performance level could skew passing standards and the interpretation of what students should know and be able to do at each level. School grades and student growth measures used in teacher evaluations could be negatively impacted. The interpretation of performance levels would change from year to year due to variations in questions in different test forms in the same year and across years.
Pam Stewart Moves Ahead on FSA Scores
Commissioner of Education Pam Stewart makes no mention of the FSA validity study qualifications regarding the validity of the FSA for different uses. She summarizes the study in three bullets. Then, she states that the FSA is an accurate way to measure student’s mastery of the standards. She announces that group level scores will be used to calculate teacher evaluations and student level cut scores.
The report says much more. The devil is in the details. Important details. This post compares the FSA report finding to the Commissioner’s statement. There are recommendations in the report that are not referenced in the statement. These could make a difference in what scores mean.
FSA Validity Study Released
When we ask if a test is valid, it is critical to ask: valid for what purpose? The report on the validity of the Florida FSA test was released today. There were findings from six studies conducted by Alpine Testing Solutions and EdCount LLC.
Given that there were six sets of results and conclusions, the researchers did not state that the test as whole was valid. Let’s look at each study’s conclusions. Even more interesting are the results of the analyses taken together and called Cross Study Conclusions.
The study found reasons to be cautious about some of the uses of the scores. The researchers reported that the Florida DOE did not intend to report scale scores or performance standards this first year. Students would receive a percentile ranking, the number of points earned out of the number possible, and the average number of points statewide by category. Interim cut scores for ELA grade 3 and Algebra I would be set by percentile equating based on the FCAT cut scores.
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- League Members visit the office of Senator Marco Rubio
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- League Members wait to see Senator Bill Nelson
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- Education Team at the Department of Education
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