The State of Florida bullied the Lee County School Board into rescinding its previous vote banning all assessments in the Southwest Florida school district. The state threatened the district saying they would “lose hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and that its graduates diplomas would be worthless.” Here is the video coverage from the […]
Lee County Schools in Florida Votes to Opt-Out of State Mandated Testing
The Lee County School Board voted last night 3-2 to opt their students out of state-mandated testing. Lee County is in SW Florida and includes the city of Fort Myers. They are the first school district in Florida to push back against an out-of-control assessment culture in the state that includes means-testing kindergarteners. A local […]
Race-Based Academic Goals
I couldn’t let news out of Florida late last week go by without comment. CBS Tampa reported that the Florida State Board of Education passed a plan for racially-based academic goals. On Tuesday, the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of […]
In Defense of the FCAT
I’ve been pretty critical of Florida’s high stakes testing. Matthew Ladner wrote a guest op/ed for the Ocala Star-Banner defending the FCAT and in it he makes some good points that FCAT opponents should consider Laudner is the senior adviser for policy and research at the Foundation for Excellence in Education. He wrote: A recent problem […]
The Anti-Testing Rebellion
Is sweeping the nation. In Texas 445 school districts have joined together in adopting a resolution calling on their state lawmakers to decrease the emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing. Robert Scott, the Texas Education Commissioner back in February said that the focus on high stakes testing has become a “perversion” of what policymakers had intended. […]