After badgering public schools, DeSantis got something right and it’s a big deal | Editorial

Finally, after spending the past two months threatening school districts, Gov. Ron DeSantis has come up with a great idea for public education.

He wants to eliminate the Florida Standards Assessments — three words that teachers hate, students dread and parents stress over. So much hinges on the FSA and those hours of test-taking that happen every spring: teacher performance evaluations, school grades and student self esteem.

DeSantis wants to replace that testing model starting in the 2022-23 school year with student “progress monitoring” three times a year that would reduce testing by 75% and allow for more individualized assessment that helps teachers make adjustments during the school year.

Outdated test

“The FSA is, quite frankly, outdated,” DeSantis said during a news conference at the Doral Academy Tuesday. “It takes days to administer, leaving less time for student learning. It is not customizable to each student, which we do have the capability now with algorithms to do. It fails to provide timely information to parents, which, as we know, is very critical that information be provided for them.”

We agree. After weeks of calling out the governor’s bullying and misguided behavior as he sought to punish school officials who enacted mask mandates, we can say we think DeSantis has the right idea here. So do teacher unions and many parents. Perhaps that’s precisely what DeSantis is looking for: a chance to prove he cares about children after trying to force them to into schools that don’t require their classmates to mask up.

(We also can’t help noticing that with this move, DeSantis would be undoing the standardized testing legacy of former Gov. Jeb Bush, which would no doubt make a certain Mar-a-Lago resident and DeSantis-whisperer very happy.)

But in this case, his motivations matter a lot less than getting it right.

Using algorithms and technology to build tests for each student’s needs? We like that.

Providing test scores before the school year ends, instead of waiting until kids are home for the summer? Ditto.

“Progress monitoring” throughout the year (however that might work)? Sounds good — in theory.

Lawmakers to decide

Until lawmakers start drafting legislation ahead of next year’s session, we won’t know if the cure will be worse than the disease. Could the end result be three annual standardized tests instead of one, created with little teacher input by a corporation somewhere in Texas? Will teachers continue to teach for tests if their performance in the classroom continues to be so tightly connected to student scores?

And will the new system be the product of bipartisanship and cooperation with teachers and parents, or just another partisan measure that appeals to the fringes of the GOP and not to average Floridians — as was much of the legislation that came out of this year’s legislative session and DeSantis’ latest attacks on local governance?

“I implore my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to leave partisanship at the door and maintain a willingness to ultimately do what’s right for schools across the state,” Democratic Sen. Shevrin Jones of Miami Gardens, vice-chair of the Senate Education Committee, said in a statement.

Sen. Manny Diaz, a Hialeah Republican who sits on the Senate Education Committee, told the Editorial Board legislative leaders are having conversations about how the new system will impact school grades and teacher evaluations. “Progress monitoring” would allow teachers to focus on specific parts of the curriculum in shorter periods of time and make adjustments when students are falling behind, he said.

He added that standardized testing has always been too focused on the “end product” and not the process of learning.

We agree. Parents agree. Teachers agree.

But, as Diaz said it himself, “the devil is in the details.”

We couldn’t agree more.