No more High-Stakes Testing in Florida schools
Staff Reports - Tuesday, March 15, Governor Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 1048, which officially replaces the Florida Standards Assessment with progress monitoring to measure students’ growth. The legislation makes Florida the first state in the nation to transition fully to progress-monitoring for school accountability. Beginning in the 2022-2023 school year, Florida students will have three short check-ins instead of multi-day, end-of-year, high-stakes tests for English Language Arts and Mathematics. Progress monitoring will benefit students, teachers and parents by allowing for informed instruction in a timely manner, helping instruction to be tailored to each student’s individual needs.
In accordance with the bill, this school year will be the last year for the FSA. Next year, Florida will become the first state in the nation to fully transition to progress monitoring-based school accountability. The 2022-2023 school year will serve as the new baseline for school accountability, and school grades will resume the following year. This change maintains the proven, successful components of Florida’s school accountability that has seen Florida’s students grow over the last two decades, with a focus on students’ readiness and growth, especially in closing achievement gaps, but provides that information to students, parents and teachers in a more timely and actionable manner.
“While much of the country has struggled to even open schools, Florida’s education leaders are continuing to push ahead and better help students, parents and teachers to close achievement gaps,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “ … we have eliminated Common Core, invested approximately $2 billion to increase teacher pay, focused on literacy and created civic standards that empower our students to become great citizens. By signing this bill, we are setting an example for the nation.”
Senate President Wilton Simpson said, “Testing is an important accountability tool for schools, teachers and students, but it doesn’t do much good to wait until the end of the year to find out a student has been having trouble. Transitioning to progress monitoring will provide more timely information about how students are doing throughout the school year so that any struggles can be addressed quickly.”
The following is a list of achievements in education that Florida has made since 2019:
• Florida has already risen to third in the nation for K-12 education according to Education Week. Florida eradicated Common Core and did so by elevating the quality and alignment of learning opportunities through creating Florida’s B.E.S.T. (Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking) Standards.
• Governor DeSantis, Commissioner Corcoran and the Legislature have continually secured the highest ever K-12 public school and per-pupil spending totals in Florida’s history.
• Marking the last few years as “The Year of the Teacher,” Governor DeSantis has elevated Florida as one of the top states in the nation in terms of starting teacher pay by securing approximately $2 billion in pay increases for teachers.
• With Commissioner Corcoran, Governor DeSantis provided a roadmap to make Florida’s standards number one in the nation, streamlined testing and massively invested in early learning, literacy and civics education like no other state in the nation.
• Florida was the first state in the nation to reopen schools in August 2020 and guarantee families had an in-person instructional option five days a week.
