State lowers FCAT writing test passing score

Local educators frustrated, even angry over test results

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – An emergency rule lowering the passing grade for Florida's standardized writing test will keep the failure rate essentially unchanged from last year.

The State Board of Education unanimously passed the rule Tuesday after preliminary results showed only about a third of students would pass this year. That would have been down from 80 percent or better on last year's writing portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT.

The dramatic decrease came after the test was made more difficult and the board raised the passing grade from 3.5 to four on a scale of zero to six.

The emergency rule will drop the passing grade to three, but only for this year. The writing test is given in the 4th, 8th and 10th grades.

Passing scores on the FCAT writing assessment plummeted from 81 percent to 27 percent for fourth-graders and showed similar drops in eighth and 10th grades, according to statewide results of the FCAT writing assessment released by the Department of Education.

FULL REPORT: 2012 FCAT writing changes and preliminary results
TEST ASSESSMENT: 4th-grade FCAT writing examples

Passing scores in eighth grade fell from 82 percent to 33 percent. Tenth graders taking the test saw a similar drop in success. While 80 percent passed the test last year, only 38 percent scored a 4 or above on a 6-point scale this time around.

Duval County School Superintendent Ed Pratt-Dannals said he was expecting some lower scores because higher standards were implemented with this year's testing, the dramatic drop is shocking.

"We just need to know how do we prepare our students more effectively. We really want it to be more about the instruction and preparation then about the level and the scores and the school grades, but we can't ignore those because there are so many decisions based on that," Pratt-Dannals said Tuesday.

The individual school districts are expecting to see school scores at the end of the week.

Education officials blamed the plummeting scores on a handful of factors including more rigorous standards. Now, the State Board of Education has to determine what to do with the scores, which have been used to determine school grades.

Educators say lowering the passing score so more students will receive a passing grade on the writing test is a Band-Aid fix to a much bigger problem.

"I really feel like there's a bit of a scam going on," said Colleen Wood, executive director of Duval Save Our Schools. "Today's call was really a cover up of the DOE get caught doing what it's been doing for a long time ...  raise standards and then not providing the tools to the districts to teach those standards to kids, and they just got caught this time."

Failing schools are required to put in place certain remedial programs that cost more to provide in already tight budget times.

Among the changes made over the past two years, this year's tests were graded by two reviewers. Test standards were also raised to include more attention to writing conventions like punctuation, capitalization and grammar. The pool of test takers was also expanded to include lower performing students.

"If the DOE expected for the kids to raise the standards and have higher expectations for the kids, I would hope that they would provide means to the teachers to meet those expectations," said Angela Lopez as she picks up her fourth-grader from school.

The president of the union representing Duval County's teachers says this is yet other insult to the state's educators and morale is at an all-time low.

"You ask yourself a very basic question: Are we here to truly promote and help public schools succeed, or are we here to truly destroy public schools?" said Terry Brady of Duval Teachers United. "That's a question that every parent and every educator and frankly every community leader needs to ask"