The FCAT you've come to know — and often complain about — is changing this school year as the state pushes higher academic standards and new testing.

For the first time, there will be no ninth-grade math Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Instead, most high school freshmen will take a new, computer-based Algebra I end-of-course exam in May, which will count toward 30 percent of their grade.

Even more sweeping is the rollout of what the state brands FCAT 2.0, coming in mid-April. It requires an upgraded reading exam for third- through 10th-graders and a retooled math exam for third- through eighth-graders.

These upgrades are based on the state's more rigorous grade-level expectations, called Next Generation Standards. In the new reading exam, for example, students will encounter passages from historical documents and classical literature.

"Parents, principals and others are so used to the standards being raised each year, and learning that the pattern is continuing with FCAT changes and end-of-course exams won't cause them to be stunned," said Judith Klinek, an assistant superintendent in Palm Beach County. "It's become a way of life."

However, the introduction of a new end-of-course algebra exam surprised Rachelle Samson, a freshman at Western High School in Davie.

"We've been taking the math FCAT since we were little kids," she said. "I would think that coming into our first year of high school, you wouldn't have to be concerned with having to take this major test."

More changes will be phased in for 2012, including an upgraded science FCAT for fifth- and eighth-graders, and the elimination of the 10th-grade math FCAT and the 11th-grade science FCAT. Those tests will be replaced by end-of-course geometry and biology exams, also taken on a computer.

State educators say the changes are needed to make sure Florida's graduates are well prepared for college and better-paying jobs. The requirements had been too lax, they argue.

In recent years, more than half the Florida high school graduates who took placement tests at the state's community colleges needed remediation in at least one of the three key subjects of math, reading and writing.

That's why the state has introduced FCAT 2.0's "much more demanding content and rigor," said Kris Ellington, assistant deputy commissioner for assessment and school performance at the Education Department.

Also, a state law passed this spring phases in the three new end-of-course exams in math and science that will replace the high school FCAT math and science exams. It also sets in motion new graduation requirements.

This year's ninth graders are required to take geometry and Algebra I, but the requirements won't affect diplomas at the outset.

However, the changes mean the region's most gifted middle school math students will find themselves in the awkward position of having to take the Algebra 1 end-of-course test as well as the math FCAT.

These seventh- and eighth-graders enrolled in the class for high school credit, so they must take the test if they want the points.

"We suspect that our middle school kids who are placed properly and doing well should have no problem," said James Chinn, Broward's middle school math curriculum specialist.

By the 2013-14 school year, incoming high school students will have to pass geometry, Algebra I and biology end-of-course exams to graduate. They also would need to take Algebra II, chemistry or physics and one other rigorous science course.