The Foundation for Florida's Future is invoking Bill Murray, and that's the fact, Jack.
Foundation for Excellence in Education blogger Mike Thomas has responded to a post we wrote last week looking at the claims in a television ad running in Tampa. The ad references the state’s top 10 ranking in an Education Week survey, rising graduation rates and more students taking and passing Advanced Placement exams.
Our post noted Florida still has among the nation’s lowest graduation rate. Thomas argues Florida requirements are more difficult than other states:
Florida’s graduation rate of 75.6 percent is low compared to most other states. And we could increase that significantly overnight by simply waiving exit exams required for graduation.
The question then becomes: Do you dumb down standards and increase your numbers, producing graduates who can’t even read at a 10th grade level? Florida has found it can raise standards and increase graduation rates at the same time. This is a journey worth taking.
And Thomas lists a number of reasons why Florida’s policies to encourage students to take Advanced Placement exams are nothing but a success.
A classroom chart explaining the differences between claims, claim evidence and commentary. Hillsborough County schools are teaching the Three Cs as the building blocks of student writing.
Essays on Florida’s new writing test will be scored by a human and a computer, but the computer score will only matter if the score is significantly different from that of the human reviewer. If that happens, bid documents indicate the essay will be scored by another human reviewer.
University of Akron researcher Mark Shermis has studied the accuracy of automated essay scoring — computer programs which read essays and assign a score — in three trials. Shermis concluded the programs worked at least as well as human scorers in two of those trials.
An Australian trial of two automated essay scoring programs found machine-scored essays fell short of human grading on closed content driven writing prompts. But that trial used just one prompt and a small sample of essays.
A second trial, sponsored by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, tested eight commercial automated essay scoring programs and one developed by a university lab. the trial gathered more than 22,000 essays from eight writing prompts spread across six states.
The nine automated essay scoring programs performed on par with human scorers. The humans earned an accuracy score of .74, while the best of the automated essay scoring programs earned an accuracy score of .78. The machines scored particularly well on two data sets which included shorter, source-based essays.
“A few of them actually did better than human raters,” Shermis said.
Florida writing tests will be graded by a human and a computer program, according to bid documents for the new test. And just 2 percent of students will take a pencil and paper exam in 2015.
A computer program will grade student essays on the writing portion of the standardized test set to replace the FCAT, according to bid documents released by the Florida Department of Education.
The essays will be scored by a human and a computer, but the computer score will only matter if the score is significantly different from that of the human reviewer. If that happens, the documents indicate the essay will be scored by another human reviewer.
Florida writing tests are currently graded by two human scorers and the state has never used computerized grading on the exam.
The Florida Department of Education announced Monday it chose the non-profit American Institutes for Research to produce new tests tied to Florida’s Common Core-based math and language arts standards. Spokesmen for the agency and AIR said they had yet to sign a contract, were still working out the details and declined to comment about the specifics of the new test.
“It’s speculative at this point to think about what is on the assessments,” said Joe Follick, communications director for the Florida Department of Education.
But the bid documents show using computers to grade the state writing test will save $30.5 million over the course of the six-year, $220 million contract with AIR. The change was part of a list which trimmed more than $100 million from AIR’s initial proposal.
The ad serves two purposes: it argues Florida schools are improving, and that improvement is due to annual statewide testing, school grading and other policies promoted by former Gov. Jeb Bush. Bush founded the Foundation for Excellence in Education. The ads are tied to the 15th anniversary of Bush’s A+ education plan.
The ad is also part of a public relations campaign defending Common Core math and language arts standards fully adopted by Florida and 44 other states. Bush considers Common Core to be the continuation of the A+ plan and he has been advocating for the standards across the country.
So what does the ad claim? And is it accurate?
@StateImpactFL I hope you do some fact checking! That’s Jeb Bush’s foundation right there. #lies
“Florida is a top ten state” — This one struck us as odd, because the small print at the bottom of the screen attributes it to the U.S. Department of Education, the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Center for Education Statistics and the National Assessment of Educational Progress — none of whom issue one-to-50 rankings of state education systems.
Miami-Dade school superintendent Alberto Carvalho speaks with Michel Martin, host of NPR's Tell Me More, in 2012.
Miami-Dade schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the process by which Florida chose a new statewide exam was ‘insufficient’ and he questioned whether the test from the American Institutes for Research will be right for Florida. StateImpact Florida’s Sammy Mack caught up with Carvalho today.
In particular, Carvalho was concerned the exam would be field-tested in Utah — but not Florida — prior to use in Sunshine State schools.
“I don’t need to explain the differences between population diversity in Utah versus the state of Florida,” said Carvalho, who last month was named the national superintendent of the year by the School Superintendents Association. “So, I find it insufficient from a statistical perspective, from a fairness prospective and even, perhaps, a legal perspective with so much riding on this exam.”
Exam results contribute to everything from whether students are promoted to fourth grade from third grade or graduate high school, to teacher evaluations and pay and a school’s A-to-F grade.
The U.S. Department of Education says Florida is one of those kids in the back when it comes to meeting the requirements of its $700 million Race to the Top grant.
The U.S. Department of Education says Florida trails other states in meeting the requirements of its $700 million federal Race to the Top grant, Education Week reports. From the story:
Yet even with billions of dollars and the political cover that came with winning a grant, the annual reports show that states still struggle mightily with how to improve teacher evaluations and the profession as a whole.
The 2013-14 school year is, for the most part, the final year of implementation for the four-year, state-level contest that has become one of the administration’s most important domestic policy initiatives. And Race to the Top will certainly be a key piece of Secretary Duncan’s K-12 legacy…
Even though much of the work is supposed to be completed, some states still have lengthy to-do lists, including Florida, which has experienced big delays in implementing common-core-aligned interim and final assessments.
The education foundation founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has launched a new web site and advertising campaign to support the Common Core math and language arts standards facing criticism in many states.
The web site features videos of teachers (they volunteered) answering common questions and explaining the standards, and interactive maps showing where the standards have been challenged. An ad began airing yesterday on television and cable and will run for 10 weeks, said Allison Aubuchon, a spokesman with the Foundation for Excellence in Education, which is sponsoring the campaign.
The advertising campaign in the Tampa Bay region targets local news and cable networks such as Animal Planet, HGTV and The Family Channel.
The teachers, there arefourofthem, are also spreading the campaign on social media.
“It is important that all Floridians continue to learn about the countless academic gains our state has made and the direction we’re headed as we move to higher standards,” Aubuchon said in a statement. “The campaign and site provide resources and tools to make learning and sharing this information easier.”
For their first interview, NPR spoke with David Sherker, a student at Coral Reef High School in Miami, and his family. President Barack Obama recently spoke at the school to encourage students to apply for federal financial aid and prod Congress to approve $100 million in ideas to make college more affordable.
The rising cost of college is frightening. From the story:
The College Board says the average at public four-year colleges and universities increased by 27 percent beyond the rate of inflation over the five years from the 2008-09 academic year to 2013-14. After adjusting for inflation, the cost of tuition more than tripled between 1973 and 2013.
That reality has been forcing more and more students to take on staggering debts. Among all students who graduated from four-year colleges in 2012, seven in 10 left with debt.
And that debt load is heavy — an average of , according to the Institute for College Access and Success. Just 20 years ago, fewer than half of college students graduated with debt, and the amount was less than $10,000 on average.
But as we and others have noted: Not going to college will cost you. The earnings gap between those with a bachelor’s degree and those without is at a 50-year high.
The new, as-yet-unnamed test is required because Florida is finishing the switch to new math, language arts and literacy standards largely based on the Common Core State Standards adopted by Florida and 44 other states. The current Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test was not designed for the new standards.
“The new assessment will include more than just multiple choice or simple fill-in-the-blank questions,” Stewart wrote in a letter to parents. “Students will be asked to create graphs, interact with test content and write and respond in different ways than on traditional tests.”
A Florida lawmaker has introduced a bill which would make college tuition free, but students would repay the cost over time.
A Florida lawmaker has proposed allowing students to attend college tuition-free, and then repay the cost with a percentage of their salary after graduating.
The proposal has been nicknamed “Pay It Forward” tuition because students making their payments keep tuition free for future generations of college students. Students might pay their Alma mater between 2 percent and 6 percent of their annual salary for as long as 25 years, depending on the terms of the program.
The idea was first proposed in Oregon, which is creating a pilot program for lawmakers to consider. In Florida, Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, introduced SB 738, which would launch a pilot program to create a Pay It Forward program.
“It’s disarmingly apparent that it sounds like a good deal,” said Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of higher education policy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
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