The Florida Senate passed a large education package Thursday that would reduce the impact of standardized testing when it comes to graduation requirements.
The legislation, sponsored by Tallahassee Republican Sen. Corey Simon, would no longer require high school students to pass Algebra 1 and the Grade 10 English Language Arts Assessments to earn a high school diploma.
Additionally, it would allow third-graders to advance grades even if they failed their reading assessment as long as they passed two previous progress monitoring assessments throughout the year.
Simon said the changes will allow students who get testing anxiety to advance.
“What we're able to do is look at that data and say, ‘OK, this kid just had a bad day testing.’ And that happens for some of our kids. Some of our kids just struggle with our tests. But the track record for that student over eight, nine years, we should be able to determine if a kid is on grade level and is mastering the material and just had a bad day,” he said.
The policy is a change in direction from the Republican-controlled body, that since the early 2000s has championed those assessments. Simon said the current system has led to an emphasis on teaching for the test and contributed to why only a little over half of Florida kids are reading on grade level.
“What we've currently been doing, we've just been testing our kids and testing our kids, we have to really take a honest look at our education system. If 98% of our teachers are effective or highly effective, but only 53% of our kids are reading on grade level, there's a problem there,” he said.
His bill has received bipartisan support. Tamarac Democratic Sen. Rosalind Osgood said before the vote on the bill that reducing the stakes of the tests is the right move.
“Eliminating high stakes testing for graduation around the Algebra 1 end-of-year course exam and 10th-grade ELA will go a long way in helping our students,” she said.
No House version of this bill has emerged, but that doesn’t mean it’s dead. It’s been an issue Senate President Ben Albritton has heavily messaged on, meaning it could be one of his chamber’s biggest asks when negotiations between the House and Senate begin to happen near the end of session.
