Faced with unfunded mandates by the Legislature that require the creation and use of hundreds of new tests, deployed primarily to evaluate teachers, the Palm Beach County school board passed a resolution that basically says “Whoa!”
The PBC school board will be sharing its resolution with other members of the Greater Florida School Board Consortium, which includes the state’s largest districts and represents nearly half the students in Florida.
This is the original resolution:
THE SCHOOL BOARD OF PALM BEACH COUNTY, FLORIDA
RESOLUTION on ACCOUNTABILITY
WHEREAS, our nation’s future well-being relies on a high-quality public education system that
prepares all students for college, careers, citizenship, and lifelong learning; and strengthens the
nation’s social and economic well-being; and
WHEREAS, our nation’s school systems have been spending growing amounts of time, money, and
instructional time on high-stakes standardized testing for the purpose of using student performance
on standardized tests to make major decisions affecting individual students, educators, and schools;
and
WHEREAS, the over-reliance and lack of consistent data on high-stakes standardized testing in state
and federal accountability systems is undermining educational quality and equity in U.S. public
schools by limiting educators’ ability to focus on the broad range of learning experiences that
promote creativity, problem solving, collaboration, critical thinking, and deep subject-matter
knowledge that will allow students to thrive in a democracy and an increasingly global society and
economy; and
WHEREAS, it is widely recognized that standardized testing is an inadequate, limited, and
often unreliable measure of both student learning and educator effectiveness; and
WHEREAS, the increasing over-emphasis on standardized testing has resulted in numerous
consequences in many schools, including narrowing the curriculum, teaching to the test, reducing
creative thinking, pushing students out of school, driving excellent teachers out of the profession,
and undermining school climate; and
WHEREAS, high-stakes standardized testing has negative effects for students from all
backgrounds, and especially for low-income students, English language learners, children of
color, and those with disabilities; and
WHEREAS, Florida’s high-stakes testing instruments are not correlated to any national or
international assessment instruments to allow for a comparison of both student
achievement and progress in Florida, with student achievement and progress with other
states and countries; and
WHEREAS, in the absence of state funding, school districts do not have the fiscal or human
resources to meet the state requirement to develop end-of-course exams for the 800+
courses above and beyond the five courses—algebra, algebra II, geometry, biology and U.S.
History—that the state has developed; and
WHEREAS, districts currently have to stop classroom instruction that requires use of
technology during state testing days in order to accommodate on-line assessment without
the funding for an adequate information technology infrastructure to conduct both
assessment and classroom instruction at the same time; and
WHEREAS, the over-reliance on Florida’s high-stakes standardized testing is undermining
Article IX, Section 1 of the Constitution of Florida which declares that it is “a paramount
duty of the state to make adequate provision . . . for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and
high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality
education” particularly with regard to adequate provision, uniformity, efficiency, and high
quality; therefore
BE IT RESOLVED, that the School Board of Palm Beach County, Florida, calls on Governor Scott, the
Florida Department of Education, and the state legislature to provide a three-year transition to July 1,
2017 for full implementation of Florida standards and accountability, with no impact on students,
teachers, school administrators, and school district assessment and evaluation changes. Further, the
Legislature should delay the use of Florida State Assessment results in determining student
promotion, graduation or for teacher evaluation until July 1, 2017. Districts should be given flexibility
in the interim to set their own criteria by which to determine student promotion and teacher
evaluation. Further, use of state student assessment data in the interim should be used solely for
diagnostic purposes in order to assure that the state’s system is valid, reliable, and fair and to create a
baseline for FY18; that the State Board of Education should empower a truly representative panel of
stakeholders—especially educators and parents—who represent all of Florida to validate that all
segments of the accountability system are fair, reliable, accurate, and funded; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the School Board of Palm Beach County, Florida, calls on the
United States Congress and Administration to overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act,
currently known as the “No Child Left Behind Act,” reduce the testing mandates, promote multiple
forms of evidence of student learning and school quality in accountability, and not mandate any fixed
role for the use of student test scores in evaluating educators.
Done the 17th day of September, two thousand fourteen, in West Palm Beach, Florida.
