This morning, Education Commissioner Pam Stewart sent an email to school superintendents explaining what happened. The problem, she says, was with test firm American Institutes for Research.
Here’s Stewart’s email:
Superintendents.
The department worked with AIR throughout the day and into the evening yesterday to better understand the issues that affected online testing in Florida on Monday. AIR has determined that a software issue caused log-in issues, including delays and error messages for a number of districts. AIR reports that of the 69,177 tests that were started yesterday, 67,745 were successfully completed.
School districts around the state report students had trouble logging in or experienced slow loading time with Florida's new online writing exam.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated.
School districts across the state said students had trouble logging in to the state’s new writing exam Monday. And the test is running slowly for many who do manage to sign in.
Miami-Dade schools said they’re suspending all online testing for 8th through 10th graders until the state can prove the new system can handle the traffic.
Schools in Hillsborough, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties suspended testing for students who couldn’t log on Monday.
It’s unclear why students are having trouble with the new exam. Florida Department of Education officials said they were investigating.
Students had plenty of other days to take the test, said spokesman Meghan Collins.
“This is a 90-minute test;” Collins said in a statement, “students have a two-week window, plus a makeup window, to complete the test. Commissioner Stewart is looking into any reported issues to determine the cause and will work to immediately resolve it.”
At least 35 districts reported problems with the exam, according to The Orlando Sentinel. Miami-Dade school officials said the problem appeared to be the test vendor, American Institutes for Research, couldn’t handle the number of students attempting to log in to the test.
School superintendents repeatedly said they expected technological problems with the exam. Parents and educators have worried the exam has been rushed into replacing the FCAT.
Miami-Dade superintendent Alberto Carvalho said Monday’s issues are a symptom of bigger problems with the test.
“You have not field tested this exam in Florida,” Carvalho said. “You have not developed a baseline.
“But you’re willing to run with what you have. Seems like you simply want to get it done rather than getting it right.”
Carvalho is one of many superintendents asking that this year’s test results not be used to calculate public school grades or teacher evaluation. They also don’t want the results to determine which third graders are held back for low reading scores.
Here’s what education writers around the state are reporting:
The new Florida Standards Assessments begin today. Most students will take the exam online, though some students will take a paper and pencil version of the writing exam.
At Miami’s iPrep Academy, getting ready for the state’s new standardized test includes rapping.
Two students are recording the daily announcements, telling classmates when and where they need to be starting today.
“Monday is ninth graders, with last name A to G,” one student raps, in a rhyme that’s no threat to Miami’s Rick Ross.
“On Tuesday, it’s ninth graders with last name H through Z,” his partner continues.
“All testing is in room 2 – 0 – 4!” they conclude together, Beastie Boys-style.
Today marks the start of testing season for Florida schools. Students have state exams scheduled every few weeks from now until the end of the school year. It’s the first time students will take a new test called the Florida Standards Assessments, or FSA, which replaces most FCAT exams.
The study shows that unemployment was down for nearly every category of majors in 2012, the only exception being communications and journalism.
Science and engineering grads had the lowest unemployment rate — most around five percent.
Architecture and social sciences had the highest unemployment rates — around 10 percent. Those rates are almost the same as for experienced workers with just a high school diploma.
But while the job market is recovering from the Great Recession, salaries are not. The Georgetown researchers say pay won’t fully recover from the recession until 2017.
Academy Prep in St. Petersburg is a private middle school that only enrolls low-income students.
It’s 7:30 a.m. and the fifth through eight graders at Academy Prep in midtown St. Petersburg are lined up outside to recite the school pledge. It’s a cool February morning and they’re a little fidgety until Head of School Gina Burkett raises two fingers above her head and all goes quiet.
The pledge starts with “ Standing in this room are the greatest, most committed, most responsible people this world has ever known.”
That may sound slightly immodest but getting these kids to believe they are capable of great things is a big part of the curriculum here.
You see, Academy Prep is a private middle school exclusively for children whose families live below the poverty level and it is paid for entirely with corporate and private donations. It’s in one of the poorest areas of Pinellas County.
The school was started 17 years ago when the owners of a local resort overheard their employees talking about the problems their kids were having in the local public school.
So, using their own money and private donations they, along with some retired educators started this not-for-profit school in the heart of one of St. Petersburg’s most troubled neighborhoods.
They had to add fractions to find a total for the amount of cake or glasses of apple juice students consumed.
Then, they had to divide the total to find the average.
Along the way, the students frequently took a peek at charts hanging around the room. Called anchor charts, these diagrams were drawn by students in the other 5th grade class and laid out each of the steps they used to create a line plot.
As Miami-Dade schools have switched to Florida’s Common Core-based math standards anchor charts are an important addition to classrooms, said Michelle White, who directs math instruction for the school district.
“It tells a learning story,” White said. “When you walk in I can look at anchor charts and see what concepts have been covered.”
But another lesson was happening on the other side of the class, one tailored for each student using i-Ready computerized instruction.
i-Ready tests each student, identifies the concepts which he or she is struggling with and then delivers lessons, games and other activities to help the student master them. And this can all happen without the teacher’s help.
Salazar divided her class in half. While students worked in groups on line plots, the rest of the class worked by themselves on i-Ready lessons.
Working with just a dozen students — instead of 24 — allowed Salazar to spend more time with each on the complicated line plot lesson, which included more math concepts than usual. Salazar planned to switch the two groups the next day.
Education Commissioner Pam Stewart has recommended eliminating a high school exam, making another optional and asking state lawmakers and local school districts to cut back on the amount of testing.
Stewart’s recommendations are the conclusion of a statewide review of standardized testing requested by Gov. Rick Scott.
“There is, without a doubt, an excess of testing in Florida schools,” Stewart said in a statement, saying she’ll work with Scott, lawmakers and school districts to “strike the appropriate balance between accountability and instruction.”
As schools switch to the Common Core standards, long-running teaching debates are becoming more public.
One of the by-products of states around the country adopting Common Core is that the standards have brought attention to long-running education debates that aren’t about money or testing.
As we noted in the story, many of these “new” techniques schools are adding have been around a while. And math educators have spent years debating the best ways to teach math.
Journalist Elizabeth Green cataloged what some argue are deficiencies in math education in a New York Times Magazine story headlined: “Why Do Americans Stink At Math?”
Escambia County school board member Jeff Bergosh is leading the new school boards group.
School board members dissatisfied with the statewide association who represents them are forming their own group, the Fort Myers News-Press and others report.
The Florida Coalition of School Board Members seeks to become a “financially responsible,” grassroots group that supports school choice options including charter school and local control of education issues.
“One of our responsibilities as a school board is to partner with the state… however, it’s become very clear that the school boards are really losing influence in Tallahassee,” said [Erika] Donalds, who was elected to the Collier school board in November. “We feel the FSBA has kind of lost touch.”
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