John O'Connor is the Miami-based education reporter for StateImpact Florida. John previously covered politics, the budget and taxes for The (Columbia, S.C) State. He is a graduate of Allegheny College and the University of Maryland.
Some argue it’s unreasonable to require students with the most severe disabilities to take the timed FCAT exam. But others argue that students with severe disabilities might be placed into separate, specialized schools if school leaders know that means their test results won’t count.
Florida Department of Education officials said they issued incorrect grades for 213 schools. Those changes mean nine school districts also earned a higher grade.
The Florida Department of Education released big news late Friday evening: 213 elementary and middle schools had received incorrect grades and would be revised upward.
After revising the scores, 116 more Florida school earned an ‘A’ grade on the state report card. Seven schools moved to a ‘D’ from an ‘F’ grade.
The revisions also mean nine school districts will earn a higher grade as well. Those districts are Collier, Desoto, Gadsden, Hillsborough, Okeechobee, Osceola, Palm Beach, Pasco and Union.
High school advanced calculus teacher, Orlando Sarduy, writes out the formula that will grade and help determine the pay of Florida teachers. Even for a college math major like him, the formula is too confusing to understand. He calls it a "mathematical experiment."
The report found Tennessee schools “systematically failed” to identify low-performing teachers through a combination of student test score improvement and principal evaluations, according to The Tennessean. Often, a principal’s evaluation and the teacher’s student testing score did not match.
Three-quarters of Tennessee teachers earned the highest scores of 4 or 5 on their principal’s evaluation, but just half of teachers earned a 4 or 5 based on test data.
The results were similar at the other end of the scale.
Principals awarded scores of 1 or 2 to just 2.5 percent of teachers. But 16 percent of teachers earned a 1 or 2 based on test scores.
Of those teachers who scored a 1 based on test scores, the average principal score was 3.6.
More than half of the state’s top-rated districts lost their ‘A’ rating this year. An ‘A’ grade is often a bragging right for school officials and a selling point for real estate agents and home buyers.
A higher percentage of charter schools earned an ‘A’ grade on the 2012 report cards than district schools, according to a StateImpact Florida analysis of grade data.
And the decline in ‘A’-rated schools was larger among district schools than charter schools.
But just as with district schools, the percentage of charter schools earning an ‘F’ grade increased this year. And a higher percentage of charter schools earned an ‘F’ grade than district schools in 2012.
The Florida Department of Education released grades for elementary and middle schools Wednesday. High school grades will be released later this year.
State leaders and school officials expected school grades to drop this year after education officials made changes to the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test and required students with disabilities and those learning English count toward a school’s grade.
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