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CENTRAL FLORIDA TINA CALDERONE UNDERSTANDS THE NEED FOR TESTING. But she also thinks the Florida Standards Assessment just isn’t cutting it, and there has to be a better way to judge how Florida students stack up. “We agree with accountability 100 percent,” says Calderone, chairwoman of the Seminole County School Board. “We truly feel there’s a better way to have our students be held accountable for learning, and teachers for teaching.” The better way might just be the Seminole Solution. Rolled out last year, the proposal would allow Florida school districts to use national norm-referenced testing instead of the Florida Standards Assessments. Advocates for the change say it would limit the number of days students sit for tests, allow teachers to focus on instruction, and give districts a better understanding of how students compare to their peers across the state and nation. Additionally, many of these national norm-referenced tests have value in the real world: for example, an ACT score can be used to compare students in two different states as well as it can be used for college admission. But education officials have said 100 | INFLUENCE SUMMER/FALL 2016 PHOTO: Daniel Reinecke allowing that flexibility just isn’t possible because the national tests don’t measure student achievement the same as Florida Standards. “The Florida Standards are unique to our state, and other assessments would not be able to measure achievement of our state’s specific educational benchmarks and expectations appropriately,” Education Commissioner Pam Stewart wrote in a July 2015 letter to Seminole County Superintendent Walt Griffin. “We are statutorily required to assess our students based on the same academic content standards in which they are instructed.” The solution, some say, is to change the law. ** Testing has long been a part of the fabric of Florida’s education system. Assessments had been in place for years. But in 1999, then-Gov. Jeb Bush signed legislation that would ultimately change how students and teachers were assessed. Students in grades 3 through 10 were required to take annual exams. Test scores were tied to school grades. And third graders were held back if they failed a third-grade reading test. “One thing we feel strongly about in the Florida public school system is accountability,” says Meghan Collins, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education. A lot has changed since that legislation went into effect. The high school graduation rate is now 78 percent, up from 52 percent in 1999. Fifty-eight percent of Florida students are reading at grade level, up from 47 percent more than a decade ago. The testing regime has also helped close the achievement gap. Among African Americans, the graduation rate is 68 percent, more than 20 points higher than it was in 2003-04. Assessments may be helping, but the shift to the Florida Standards was plagued with controversy from the start. The benchmarks are based in large part on the Common Core standards, and after months of debate, the state decided not to use tests developed by Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). Instead, the state picked tests developed by the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The Seminole Solution One Central Florida school system seeks a better way of testing student achievement than the statewide assessment BY JENNA BUZZACCO-FOERSTER Tina Calderone, chairwoman of the Seminole County School Board, envisions an accountability standard based on national norms and standards.


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