Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was shown some love by a group usually hostile to Republicans: a teachers’ union.
The Florida Education Association on Tuesday applauded DeSantis for announcing the end of the Florida Standards Assessment, the state’s year-end standardized test that is a big factor in determining school grades, in favor of a new testing regimen that relies on “progress monitoring.”
“Today’s move to drop high-stakes Florida Standards Assessments (FSA) testing in the 2022-2023 school year is a big win for our students and public schools,” the FEA said in a press release. “It will free up time for genuine teaching and learning, a move that the Florida Education Association (FEA), local unions and our 150,000 members have long advocated.”
According to DeSantis, progress monitoring will mean three shorter tests during the school year, one each administered in the fall, winter, and spring.
The program is called the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking, and the governor said these tests, unlike the FSA, will take hours and not days. He also said they can be tailored to the student, whereby he described the tests as “individualized check-in assessments.”
Florida will be the first state to utilize the system on a statewide basis, said DeSantis.
“We appreciate that [Florida Education] Commissioner [Richard] Corcoran and the Florida Department of Education are listening on this issue and are reducing the amount of standardized testing in Florida’s schools,” FEA President Andrew Spar said in the press release.
“The FEA looks forward to continuing to work on how Florida assesses K-12 students and teachers, so we can get it right in the long term. This is a great opportunity to address how we can use progress monitoring assessments to best serve students.”
The union noted that the FSA will still be administered as in years past for the 2021-22 school year – “with all its high-stakes consequences.”
The 2022-23 school year will be considered the “benchmark” year to determine how children are assessed under the FAST program.
“A student’s future shouldn’t hang on one high-stakes, make-or-break test, and one test shouldn’t dominate weeks that could otherwise be used for meaningful instruction,” Spar added.
“We welcome today’s [Tuesday’s] announcement as a sign that Florida is moving closer to a system that focuses on students’ growth instead of on high-stakes standardized tests.”
The union maintains that allowing teachers to spend less time on standardized testing and more time on “genuine teaching” also may help reduce Florida’s “massive” shortages of teachers and support staff, by improving job satisfaction. The FEA noted that at the start of the 2022 school year, Florida’s school districts reported almost 9,000 vacancies for teachers and support staff.
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The TEACHERS UNION is a political arm of the Dept. Of Education that is run by the SOCIALIST COMMUNIST DEMOCREEP PARTY! They are responsible for THE INTENTIONAL FAILURE OF THE PUBLIC EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES!