More FCAT news
Protestors stormed Florida's Governor Jeb Bush's office last Thursday, demanding that he suspend the FCAT exit exam or face a statewide boycott. The next day, Governor Bush proposed an alternative method for failing seniors. Coincidence, or calculated timing?
Gov. Jeb Bush on Friday expanded the scope of the Legislature's special session to consider a measure that would help some students get standard diplomas if they fared well on national college placement exams, calling it a "common sense measure to meet the real needs" of students without lowering standards...
Bush's plan was unveiled only a day after 2,500 parents and students rallied outside the governor's Miami office to protest the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test as an unfair roadblock to graduation...But the governor's aides said he is not backing off his support of the FCAT.
More than 13,000 seniors are at risk state-wide of failing to obtain their diplomas. The panacea of using "passing" (as yet undefined) SAT/ACT scores is just that. The article admits "the FCAT and the college placement exams are not comparable because they don't evaluate the same knowledge and skills," and that 40% of those failing don't have the credits necessary for graduation. Will they still be given diplomas with high SAT scores?
Florida's education officials are claiming that the FCAT can be compared with the college entrance exams, and that "a passing score of 300 out of a possible 500 on the FCAT is equivalent to a 410 out of a possible 800 on the SAT verbal test and 370 out of a possible 800 on the SAT math test. For students who take the ACT, they say an FCAT score of 300 is equivalent to a score of 15 out of a possible 36 on both the verbal and math test."
I haven't seen any data that scales FCAT scores to SAT/ACT scores, so I can't comment on the validity of this comparison. If true, it's more evidence that the FCAT is a minimum-competency exam - students are passing with the equivalent of a 780 combined SAT score - but I won't believe in this comparison until I see the study supporting it. Another problem is that students who were perhaps not planning to go to college must now register and pay for these exams - and perhaps not pass them. I don't think I need to remind any readers that the same students who are flunking the FCAT in large numbers are also the ones who, as a group, tend to score lower on the SAT and ACT as well.
If this is a possible solution, even temporarily, why administer the FCAT at all? And what makes the school board think that their SAT/ACT passing scores won't be challenged by the same groups who are challenging the FCATs? If the FCAT isn't considered by some to be a valid measure of the mastery of Florida's high school curriculum, the college entrance exams are obviously less so.