Low FCAT test scores under review

Reginald Alceus
Outlook Staff Writer

On July 1, Florida Education Commissioner Dr. Eric J. Smith announced the results of the 2010 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) for grades 4-11 in the areas of mathematics, reading, writing and science. Although the results show a definite increase in the percent of proficient scores at the middle and high school levels, elementary scores were shown to be surprisingly low, encouraging school officials to challenge the accuracy of the scoring. According to the Florida Department of Education website, upon publication of the 2010 FCAT results last month, several school districts have requested further evaluation. The evaluation concerns the learning gains of the lowest 25 percent lowest performing students throughout the state.

“What we’ve had to deal with is the many differences in learning gains from the year before to this year, especially at the fourth and fifth-grade levels,” said Jackie Pons, superintendent of Leon County Schools. “We along with the districts of Miami-Dade, Hillsborough, Duval and Broward sent a letter to the Commissioner (Eric Smith) expressing our concerns. That covers almost 40 percent of the students in Florida, and we all had the same type of results. The learning gains weren’t at the level that they should have been, and the improvement wasn’t there, especially for grades four and five.”

Learning gains are the record of how much a student learns from one year to the next during grades 3 through 10, when the reading and math portions of the FCAT are administered. In particular, attention is given to students with gains in reading and math in the lowest 25 percent in levels one, two or three throughout the schools.

“Florida’s school districts and teachers have done a tremendous job over the years in increasing the overall level of achievement for our students,” according to a statement from the Florida Department of Education. “Previous FCAT results and nationally recognized assessments such as the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) exemplify this growth in student performance.”

On July 12, Smith agreed to a third-party review of the FCAT scores after receiving the letter signed by Pons and the other counties’ superintendents. In a press release, Smith stated he “takes the concerns of our school districts very seriously,” and sought the Human Resource Research Organization to perform the review and publish the results once they are available. “The Department has contracted with the Human Resource Research Organization (HumRRO) to evaluate the learning gains results of the lowest 25 percent of students,” the FDOE website stated. “Their audit will focus on the test characteristics, score distributions, and changes in score distributions for FCAT reading and mathematics for grades three, four, and five for the spring 2008 through 2010 administrations. The results of this analysis will be published as soon as they are available.”

In addition to the Hum- RRO and the Buros Center for Testing, the department is also contracting with the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment to review the results. This will be done to conduct a thorough review of the test design, scaling and equating. The assessment will focus on grades three, four, and five reading and mathematics scores for 2007 through 2010. Significant delays due to technological issues initially delayed the reporting of the FCAT results, due in part to NCS Pearson, the company contracted by the state of Florida to score the FCAT tests.

To ensure each individual student’s results matched their demographic information, additional time was needed. According to Pons, school grades will not be released until the evaluation by the independent reviewers is complete. Pons said the scores of the students must be counted accurately before they are released.

“Whenever you see some inconsistent data with that many different students, you want to get an independent evaluator to take a close look and see if everything is okay,” Pons said. “It won’t affect individual scores, it affects the school’s scores because the learning gains are used to calculate the school’s grades.” Pons said although he and many others approve of holding students to higher standards and acknowledged the value of testing, he felt standardized testing was imperfect. Rather, he said he would prefer to see a nationally normalized system that would allow states to compare the progress of their students with one another.

“I’m a superintendent that thinks too much emphasis is placed on the FCAT,” Pons said. “What’s just as important is the amount of knowledge the students gain. What’s more important is what the student learns during the school year from the teachers. A one-time test taken by a student when it might not be a good day might create some problems for the actual assessment itself. There’s more to education than just a one-time, high stakes test.”

Although the evaluation has delayed the results, Pons admitted it will likely not have an impact upon how the schools will be operated next year. Rather than bring extra concerns to the commissioner regarding delays, Pons said he would prefer the evaluation of the results be done right and accurately. Most of all, Pons said although the incident has almost little individual effect on the students themselves, the efforts taken to ensure quality and fairness will be of use to parents.

“The main thing parents can have a lot of comfort in is that we’re making sure that these results are going to be accurate,” Pons said. “It’s a priority, and we’re not into rushing to give out school grades when there are concerns out there, so I think when the process is through, it will increase the level of confidence in the test.”

Reginald Alceus can be reached at realceus@capitaloutlook.com