{"id":11831,"date":"2012-08-21T13:41:45","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T17:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=11831"},"modified":"2012-08-24T12:10:32","modified_gmt":"2012-08-24T16:10:32","slug":"in-new-ad-gov-rick-scott-says-hes-listening-to-complaints-about-fcat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2012\/08\/21\/in-new-ad-gov-rick-scott-says-hes-listening-to-complaints-about-fcat\/","title":{"rendered":"In New Ad, Gov. Rick Scott Says He&#8217;s Listening To Complaints About FCAT"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JjIKVWhMlGU\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Gov. Rick Scott has released a back-to-school message in the form of a Republican Party of Florida-sponsored ad.<\/p>\n<p>In the as Scott says &#8220;listening to parents and teachers is still the best education&#8221; and is one reason he pushed to increase education funding by $1 billion.<\/p>\n<p>But the second part of the ad is likely to rile some educators.<\/p>\n<p>After a year marked by <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2012\/07\/11\/five-questions-about-floridas-2012-school-grades\/\">changes to the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test and the school and district grading<\/a> systems &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2012\/07\/23\/state-error-means-more-than-200-florida-schools-earned-a-higher-grade\/\">and errors with the new grades<\/a> &#8212; Scott says he&#8217;s heard the complaints.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve listened to the frustrations parents and teachers have with the FCAT,&#8221; he says in the video. &#8220;Next year we begin improving our testing system. No more teaching to the test.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Amid the controversy earlier this year,<a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2012\/07\/09\/governor-scott-says-florida-students-might-face-too-much-testing\/\"> Scott said earlier this year that Florida may test students too much.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Now, Scott makes it sounds as if the next testing regimen, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, is a reaction to problems with the FCAT. Actually, the <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2012\/08\/21\/what-floridas-next-standardized-test-will-look-like\/\">PARCC is part of the long-planned move to Common Core standards and assessments<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And though much of the FCAT will go away when PARCC is fully implemented in 2013, it doesn&#8217;t mean the end of testing in Florida schools.<\/p>\n<p>Florida is also using end-of-course exams which test a student&#8217;s knowledge of algebra, biology, geometry or other subjects.<\/p>\n<p>As the News Service of Florida reports, a teacher&#8217;s union spokesman says the ad is more about re-election than education:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;This video is a campaign ad designed to calm folks down about testing and a PR move to improve Scott\u2019s image,&#8221; said Mark Pudlow, a spokesman for the Florida Education Association, the state&#8217;s largest teacher union, and a longtime critic of the FCAT. &#8220;And I think it\u2019s designed to tamp down any chance that testing becomes an issue in legislative races.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Even fellow Republicans acknowledge that Scott may be a bit late to the idea, but some say that&#8217;s OK.<\/p>\n<p>Sen. Nancy Detert, the Republican who sponsored the bill phasing out the FCAT for a new &#8220;end-of-course&#8221; exam, said even if the idea has already left the station, it&#8217;s better for Scott to board late than not at all, because he can help sell the new testing scheme.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re happy to have him on the train,&#8221; said Detert, of Venice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What do you think of the ad?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gov. Rick Scott has released a back-to-school message in the form of a Republican Party of Florida-sponsored ad. In the as Scott says &#8220;listening to parents and teachers is still the best education&#8221; and is one reason he pushed to increase education funding by $1 billion. But the second part of the ad is likely [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":3465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[605,1157,1019,643,1027],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11831"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}