Karen Yi reports in Florida’s Sun-Sentinel that the new Common Core tests will be harder and longer than the FCAT, and online. Expect the failure rate to increase. This is Jeb Bush’s hope, so parents will turn against public schools and seek charters or vouchers.
State’s new student tests will be longer, tougher
By Karen Yi Sun Sentinel
Florida students will take a new standardized state test this spring that’ll be more rigorous, slightly longer and mostly online.
These high-stakes exams, tied to tougher Common Core education standards, will replace the math, reading and writing portions of the FCAT. Schools are preparing now but say it is a big question mark how their students will perform — especially since the state has not come up with grading standards.
Here are some answers to commonly-asked questions about these new tests, which eventually will help determine school grades, teacher evaluations and pay.
Why did we get new standardized tests?
The tests, like the new K-12 education standards, focus on a deeper understanding of how things work and critical thinking skills. State officials say they are raising the bar so students are college and career ready.
What will be tested?
The Florida Standards Assessment will test students in grades 3-11 on math and language arts starting in March. The series of tests will also include a writing portion and end-of-course exams in Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry.
How is the test different from the FCAT?
The Florida Standards Assessment will test more students and require more computer-based exams.
Eleventh-graders will now have to take the reading portion of the test that includes a writing component. Before, only students up to the 10th grade were tested…
Those in grades 5-11 will take the tests on computers. Third- and fourth- graders and students taking the writing portion in grades 5-7 will stick to traditional paper and pencil tests.
The tests will be longer. The writing component will last 90 minutes, 30 minutes longer than FCAT. The reading and math portions will also be 20-40 minutes longer, depending on the grade level.
How will the questions be different?
Since most of the tests will be online, many of the questions will be interactive. That means fewer traditional multiple choice questions. The reading section includes a portion where students will listen to podcasts and answer questions. In math, students will be required to solve problems using basic computer skills such as dragging and dropping or sorting answers.
The writing component will no longer ask students to simply respond to a specific prompt. Students will read passages and be asked to compare and contrast, draw inferences and answer questions based on the text.
When will the tests start?
The writing portion will begin the first week of March. Testing will run through mid-May, with schools given about a three-week window to complete testing in each subject. The math, reading and writing portions take five days to complete….
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Karen Yi reports in Florida’s Sun-Sentinel that the new Common Core tests will be harder and longer than the FCAT, and online. Expect the failure rate to increase. This is Jeb Bush’s hope, so parents will turn against public schools and seek charters or vouchers”
REALLY?? What about parents being discontent about their student’s performance and turn against their own deficiencies (ex. not checking on homework, allowing too much TV and inane Internet use, being overworked and not spending enough time with their children [because of being in so much ill-advised debt?], etc., etc….ad nauseum)
As a teacher in FL for over 24 yrs, a parent of an 8th and 10th grader, a past PTSA president, and past local science-teachers association president, I will be the first to admit that the “buck stops here”, and that much of my kids doing not-the-best-they-can at school is because I’m not helping them as much as I should, nor holding them accountable (via rewards, negative reinforcement or punishment) to the level I know I should.
This fallacy of blaming schools and teachers MUST stop, and society (ie. families) must come to admit that they make the clay; schools can only slightly change the form. Most, if not all, studies correlate student success first to family support, then somewhere down the list of weighted multiple variables comes school climate and teacher input.
The entire “Right” conspiracy and hypocrisy of trying to blame schools, instead of analyzing and remediation culture, STINKS of double-standards and capitalistic greed (“ohh, I don’t want my child at the “troubled” public school, so please build me an alternative charter school where I can “protect” them, away from the “masses”).
What did Jeb Bush do for FL???? Well, created the FCAT, emphasized better instruction (for which I am ALL FOR), but then erroneously believed the better instruction is only measured by more testing….and “watch me pull of rabbit out of my hat….oops wrong hat”, gave us a system where learning=testing=learning=punishment=narrow and shallow pedagogy.
Most of the “Right” “leaders” (not servants) send their kids to private or charter schools anyway; so for them to comment about the “failures” of public schools is like a blind man trying to analyze the sun.
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The real fallacy that must stop is the idea that anyone can or should be held “accountable” for someone else’s actions (or lack of action). If we’re relying on bribes and threats (otherwise known as rewards and punishments) to get people (grown or not) to do what we think they should do, we need to re-think our demands and expectations. Parents are no more responsible for this mess than teachers are. If children are performing poorly on standardized tests, it’s the tests themselves we should be looking at.
Parents by and large are doing the best they can for their children just like teachers are. Some are better than others. But holding the “bad” ones accountable, threatening or berating them is not going to improve anything, and will only divide people against each other, which is what the rephormers are hoping for. Parents are subject to the same forces teachers are these days. They’re working harder and bringing home less. They’re feeling scared, depressed, hopeless. We all need more support, less judgment.
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Agreed and thanks Dienne,
You’re correct, the buck really stops with the student (not teacher, parent, school, etc.) and as you brilliantly inferred: the main problem is test-emphasis (as if life-preparedness can be scored on a multiple choice test). Tests only look at a small part of mind/soul/brain/self/spirit capacity and potential; a part that actually may have little real-world value.
Yes, most parent are doing the best they can; you’re right, they should not be judged.
IMO, Microsoft, EA Sports, Apple and the whole video-game industry has a lot to do with our students deficits when it comes to poor testing, because their minds have conditioned to quick images, short text and quick reward. Maybe Angry Birds is to blame….or maybe our tests should be in Angry Bird formats….LOL
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RL, parents don’t control how Florida DoEd and AIR set “cut scores.” If FL students experience something similar to what NY students did w. the “pilot” of PARCC, passing/proficiency rates may be low. Even for a child whose parent practically does homework for him (ugh).
If your youngsters are in 8th & 10th grade, I doubt that Alfie Kohn would fault you re your level of rewards/negative reinforcement. They know they’re in a family that values learning.
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If they’re like the cut scores that were in Utah this last year, between 56% and 71% were not “proficient” on those tests.
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True. I have been on cut score panels in Florida (not recently). The process was rational then. I do not see why we would use NAEP Proficiency equivalence. Who knows? There is a bill to reduce testing in our legislature. So much of what we do in Florida in depends on the strings attached to federal money.
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The state recently (maybe 2 months ago) said that they would employ a method known as equating to determine cut scores. They know from historical data from the FCAT that 18% of students get a level 1 on the FCAT so 18% of students will get a 1 on the FSA. It makes sense with a new test to equate the whole thing so that students aren’t harmed AND so that Florida doesn’t look stupid. Statistically, it makes sense, as well, to equate the test for 3 to 4 years with historical data until the new data stabilizes.
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It figures. The fat cats cannot wait to get their hands on educational dollars, no matter what the cost to our future. As has been said so often, countries reach their zenith and then deteriorate. When money supplants people in importance one can expect that kind of thing it seems.
George B. Shaw said something to the effect that the only thing man has learned from history is that man has learned nothing from history.
Perhaps more than a truism.
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Percentile equating when the two tests are different doesn’t tell you much.
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The questions were field tested in Utah for five million bucs too…
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Yep. Our kids in Utah were guinea pigs for Florida. You’re all welcome (this sentence is sarcasm).
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I’m sure you are quite aware of this, but others may not be.
There is a very dark history of making the people of Utah guinea pigs for testing.
The people of Saint George were made guinea pigs for atmospheric nuclear testing after WWII which led to a large number of cancers and early deaths.
Worst of all, rather than cancel tests on all days when the wind was blowing (which might have at least mitigated the local effects somewhat), the people holding the tests purposely waited until days when the wind was blowing toward southern Utah and away from Las Vegas – -as if the people of St. George were somehow inferior and not worthy of concern.
Testers of all types know that the people of Utah are less likely to challenge authority and they exploit that for their own purposes.
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Strike the above “worst of all” because it isn’t.
Here’s the worst:
The people holding the tests never warned the folks in St. George and the surrounding areas about any dangers. In fact, though the testers were quite aware of the danger, they actually told the people there was none and St. George families watched the tests from their front porches.
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Other examples of Utah being used as a testing ground (and the people essentially as guinea pigs) are the “hundreds, perhaps thousands”* of open air chemical weapons tests that have been carried out at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah’s west desert 80 miles from Utah’s largest metropolitan area (Salt lake City) including an open-air VX nerve gas test in 1968 that killed 6249 sheep.
from a US general Accounting Officestudy
“ … Dugway Proving Ground is a military testing facility located approximately 80 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. For several decades, Dugway has been the site of testing for various chemical and biological agents. From 1951 through 1969, hundreds, perhaps thousands of open-air tests using bacteria and viruses that cause disease in human, animals, and plants were conducted at Dugway… It is unknown how many people in the surrounding vicinity were also exposed to potentially harmful agents used in open-air tests at Dugway.”
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This train wreck proves that the tests do not really test anything(yes Duane, we knew that!) To use writing, without going through the entire process of editing and so forth, and to compound this with comparing and contrasting written and auditory passages, no longer tests writing, but rather, a general cognition. This is the new I.Q. tests that spawned eugenics practices in the old Army and that was advocated by the likes of Termin and Skinner. Behaviorism with a touch of math all to make a brave new world most of us want no part of. This is all being sold for our own good. See Skinner’s book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, these people have money, power, and really believe this crap. If we do not turn this around soon politically, our last resort may be violence.
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OT,
If I may modify your statement to better fit my thoughts/concerns: “This train wreck proves that the tests do not really MEASURE anything.
They may test/assess things (usually proxies for things) but they certainly don’t measure anything.
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The FSA is just Florida’s less expensive and easier to administer version of PARCC. Frankly, I think it is a step up from the FCAT.
The problems with the standards could be fixed. The problems with testing could be fixed too, if the results were used to help students rather than to drive a reform strategy that is ill defined and irresponsible. Maybe Congress will change the testing requirement??
Lamar Alexander’s draft bill at least has testing options. It also has per pupil funding for charter facilities, however, which makes it hard to support.
Florida has done one thing half right. Its 3rd grade retention policy is modified. AND, the Chair of the Senate Education Committee has agreed that the weight given to VAM scores should be reduced. Small steps, but good ones.
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What is the third grade retention modification you are referring to?
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3rd graders who failed FCAT were retained. If they made up skill deficiencies at the level of mid 4th grade, they could be promoted mid year. Now they just need to pass 3rd grade level and can be promoted in mid year.
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Sue – I’m confused, are you saying the retention policy itself is good, or just that the way it’s been modified somehow makes it better? Research overwhelmingly shows absolutely no benefits to retaining students and many harms. Kids who are retained have greatly increased chances of dropping out before graduation. The fact that kids can catch back up mid-year in no way erases the stigma of failure from having been held back in the first place. Retention is never the answer (unless the question is “how can we get kids to feel like failures, hate school and drop out?”).
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“The problems with the standards could be fixed. The problems with testing could be fixed too. . . ”
NO!, NO!, NO!
Wilson has proven the complete epistemological and ontological invalidities of the education standards and standardized testing.
THERE IS NO FIXING those educational malpractices.
To understand why read “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
By Duane E. Swacker
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Thanks for the great analysis Duane! Wow, Wilson hit the nail, and drove it deep into the coffin of quantifying students’ value by a score. Yes, the score only measure that unique and specific space-time interaction with student and instrument, and extrapolating beyond that to “assign” “potential” is erroneous, because the students’ later events are not all tests, all day long, forever. So, doing well, or poor, on a test means only that; the measure of that moment, not future ones.
I love the constructivists and Foucault is brilliant; yet behind it all I’m an objectivist (I believe the elephant has spoken and given a description of itself in the term “I am that I am”).
Grace
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I agree as long as the students who struggle get the help they need. The change in retention policy in Florida is only a step in the right direction ie one half year retention is better than a whole year. We need a better way. I did a post on PK Yonge, our lab school. It won an Edutopia award for how they handle the problem. You can see it on our lwveducation.com blog.
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Besides per pupil funding for charter schools, the bill has an entire Title devoted to federal grants for expanding charter schools.
Begins at p. 217
Click to access AEG15033.pdf
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Seems an awful lot like the PARCC testing we’ll have in Ohio to me. Gee, I wonder if Pearson is writing the “new” tests for Florida……..
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Nope. It’s AIR. That’s why Florida is “renting” Utah’s tests…AIR wrote Utah’s tests.
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No surprise from me. Florida is renting Utah’s tests for the next couple of years until AIR writes its own tests for Florida. Last year, Utah’s SAGE test took a minimum of ten hours for each student, starting in grade three. The two essays per student (!) were not timed, and some students took five or six hours on the essays alone. Teachers were told that the essays “should” take 60 minutes for one and 90 minutes for the other, including reading the articles that the students had to cite in their essays, but we all knew that it was going to be far longer. This year, we now also have SAGE interim testing, which is an additional ten hours. While the interim tests are technically optional, at least in my district, they are mandatory.
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How does one create a test, expect children to take this test in a few weeks but does not know how they are going to grade them?
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AIR has test item banks no doubt. Setting passing standards no doubt will happen after test results come in March?? We used to have tentative standards based on pilot tests.
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You’re getting results in March? Wow! Utah didn’t get results from the April and May testing last year until December. The cut scores were set by a group of teachers (don’t get me started on that) in July. It has not been said what “standard” was used to set those cut scores, but it was ridiculously high, since over 70% of 8th and 9th grade students were not “proficient” in math.
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I have compiled a list of research studies that provide evidence that making tests more difficult and longer in length leads to improved student learning:
Good luck to my colleagues in FLA.
Wish you better luck than we’ve had here. Because if this really worked, why not just keep uping the ante? Super hard and super long tests would produce even better students. No reason to stop there because this is the answer to teachers prayers everywhere. Ridiculously impossible tests that last for months and China will be begging for mercy.
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Longer and harder tests lead to “better learning”, or just better test results? (a tautology, if one believes learning is equal to test scores), but it is not 100% correlated.
Yes, if one has a mission statement of better test scores, develops a curriculum to teach to those tests, then….voila…better test scores…..duh!
But, if one believes learning transcends testing, that much of what is important to know and do (ex. life skills) cannot be measured on a test (or at least not the current genre of factoid-based multiple choice “mind-shackling” test, like we have here in FL), then the circular reasoning, false assumptions, and tautology of “better test scores = better learning” becomes patently obvious to all, except the pedagogically oblivious (those whose value system of quantifying children has possibly nefarious intents, ex. open the doors for more “free market” approaches).
Can you please cite some of this research. As a PhD (all but dissertation) candidate in science education, I’m curious about some of these studies.
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We test in March and results are expected in the fall.
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OH Dept of Ed just recommended a 20% reduction in testing. I know it’s not a lot but if you consider that no one would have done anything about it without parents and teachers blowing the whistle, it’s a start.
Some of the numbers were shocking to me. They’re testing 3rd graders 28 hours a year. They more than double testing from 2nd to 3rd grade. This is just the time taking standardized tests. It doesn’t include prep time or the disruption and “down time” as they move kids in and out and onto and off computers to get them all tested in one building with limited access.
https://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Testing/Ohio-s-State-Tests/Testing-Report-and-Recommendations-2015.pdf.aspx
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“Testing Endurance”
When the students fail
Increase test duration
Time in testing jail
Shouldn’t be vacation
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I just taught a 7th grader how to shift to make a capital letter. There is a digital divide. This is another way to divide the haves and have-nots, and wait for the kids without to fail. We are an urban school with one computer lab for 840 students. The students have not had keyboarding. Many of our students will not be able to type essays or click-and-drag. Our high-stakes tests are not online yet, but looks like a golden opportunity for one or more of the corporations to come in and sell us some testing hardware and software. Grrr.
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Not to mention many of the strategies we teach them for reading passages requires highlighting and notetaking. How do you do any of that on a computer screen?
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All of this Common Core stuff and new testing stuff is all about making the former Gov. Jeb more money as he creates more jobs for the testing/publishing industry, as he is counting on them to fund his presidential campaign. This is all about money. In the meantime, children’s futures are being sold for bags of silver.
And, yes, this is a way to blame teachers and grow the charter school industry which is FACIST. If you do not know what fascism is look it up. To give you a concise definition it is when taxpayer monies are funneled into private hands to carry out government functions while the “private hands” make a profit. This is NOT capitalism. Capitalism, to distinguish it from fascism, is when private hands make a profit from their own PRIVATE (not taxpayer) money which they invest in a business. I hope you can see the distinction. Whereas capitalism is a great thing because a business that does not meet the consumer’s expectations will fail, with facism the business is fueled by government not consumers, so that even when the enterprise (in this case Charter schools) are failing, the “invisible hand of the market” will not be there to “correct” its shortcomings.
Parents need to REALLY wake-up and realize that charter schools are no better than public schools. Being that charter schools are less regulated than public schools, I would actually dare say they are worse!
It’s up to parents to NOT place their children in charter schools. Please bankrupt charters so that the public school system is not decimated. Charter schools is not a solution to “underperforming” public schools. Don’t let them fool you into thinking they are.
And one last comment as to “right” versus “left” and “Republicans” versus “Democrats”: They are both the SAME thing. Understand that lobbyists and special interest (such as the testing companies and publishers) “buy” politicians on both sides of the aisle. Politics has become so corrupt that most/many politicians no longer hold ideals close to their hearts, but their pocket books! For the record, I am a Libertarian, owned by none and only fueled by my love and passion for the Constitution; something that politicians take an oath to uphold, but trample on more often than I’d like to know.
All of this equates to the dumbing down of America. Thanks Jebster! Not really, but it is my polite way of saying thanks for nothing! And you really want to be President!?! Unlucky for you that I was educated by a system not created by you, and I can analyze you to the core (no pun intended).
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