DeSantis promised to cut school testing by 75%, but does FSA overhaul actually do that? | Editorial

When Gov. Ron DeSantis announced legislation to end the dreaded Florida Standards Assessments (FSA), he boasted the proposal would reduce testing in schools by 75%.

It’s unclear whether the bill he signed on Tuesday will achieve that reduction. In fact, there’s disagreement over whether it will reduce testing at all. Sponsor Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., R-Hialeah, says it certainly will. The unions representing teachers in Miami-Dade County and Florida say it won’t.

A definitive answer isn’t available yet. Senate Bill 1048 leaves a lot for the Department of Education to iron out, including the length and format of the new assessments that will replace the FSA. The state has yet to pick a vendor to create the assessments, which will be computer based when they roll out in the 2022-23 school year, the Herald reported.

No end to high stakes

To the dismay of many teachers and parents, the new law doesn’t eliminate “high-stakes” assessments in grades 3-10 for English and mathematics. An end-of-year assessment in the spring will replace the FSA in determining school grades, third-grade retention, high-school graduations and school improvement ratings.

We understand the concern United Teachers of Dade President Karla Hernandez-Mats raised to the Herald Editorial Board about this being “lipstick on a pig,” the same system with a different name.

“[The Legislature] didn’t understand the assignment, and they failed,” she said.

Still, there also are things to like about the end product.

The new system will replace the FSA with “progress monitoring” at the beginning and middle of the school year. Some school districts already do that. That will prepare students to take the comprehensive end-of-year exam in the spring.

The results of progress monitoring must be sent within a week to teachers, and within two weeks to parents, and must yield “actionable feedback that allows for tailored instruction throughout the school year.” The results from the end-of-year test will be made available no later than May 31, instead of the current June 30 deadline for most FSA results.

A student’s progress-monitoring results will be available if they transfer into a different school district in the middle of the year, “providing the receiving school district with the most up-to-date data on where that student is in comparison to their peers,” according to a legislative bill analysis.

This is all good, but what about the gist of this bill — the amount of testing?

Testing time

How long these tests will take isn’t spelled out in SB 1048. That will be left up to the DOE, which reports to DeSantis, so we expect the department to be under pressure to make those tests quicker. But because the end-of-year assessments must still be “comprehensive,” the Florida Education Association, the statewide union representing educators, writes on its website that, “There is every reason to believe students will spend more time testing next school year.”

Diaz told the Editorial Board that he rejects the premise that his legislation will lead to more testing.

He expects a reduction in testing time because the new law requires computer assessments instead of pencil and paper, which he said takes longer. He worries about individual districts over-testing by continuing to administer their own assessments on top of the new state requirements. If that’s the case, Diaz put districts on notice, warning that lawmakers might impose a testing cap in the future. This is coming from a Legislature who’s not hesitant to tie the hands of school officials, as it did when it banned mask mandates.

Less stress and anxiety?

There’s also disagreement over what testing actually means. Diaz said the progress monitoring isn’t “high-stakes” testing, meaning it doesn’t count toward a student’s or a school’s performance as that end-of-year assessment does. Therefore, it doesn’t come with the anxiety and stress usually associated with testing.

To the teacher unions, having an end-of-year assessment, plus two smaller assessments during the year, equates to more testing, more stress and anxiety. They have a point.

Getting rid of paper-and-pencil tests could be another problem. Hernandez-Mats pointed out that many schools don’t have a computer for each student. Ushering students in and out of computer labs would create even more disruption than the FSA currently does. Luckily, Diaz recognizes that shortage of equipment is an issue the Legislature might have to address in the future. We hope his fellow lawmakers agree, and act responsibly.

As Diaz put it, “The key to this will be implementation.”

Florida has been down this road before with a new iteration of standardized testing every few years that burdened teachers, students and parents, instead of facilitating real learning.

We can’t be confident that things will be different this time. We hope the state proves us wrong.