School districts attempting to blame the state Department of Education for their dismal performance on the FCAT writing exam are lamely reaching for a "dog-ate-my-homework" cop-out.
Back on July 5, 2011, all districts were sent a memo advising that the 2012 test would be more rigorously graded than previous versions.
"It wasn't a secret," DOE spokeswoman Jamie Mongiovi told Sunshine State News on Wednesday. The memo, headed "Changes to FCAT Writing," spelled out how student essays would face tougher grading on spelling, punctuation, grammar and overall essay construction.
Districts were also informed that the passing grade would be raised from 3.0 to 4.0.
Still, district superintendents whined on Wednesday about "miscommunication" from Tallahassee.
"Somewhere there's a miss. Somewhere there's a disconnect," Collier Superintendent Kamela Patton complained to her hometown paper, the Naples Daily News. "There's no way scores drop 50-to-60 points."
Yet the precipitous decline in scores into the 30 percent range -- down from the 80 percent of previous years -- should have been no surprise in districts where local officials ignored the DOE's warnings and failed to take proactive action in the eight months leading up to FCAT.
Ruth Melton, director of legislative relations at the Florida School Boards Association, said DOE warned districts they were going to face a different, and stricter, grading regimen this year.
Melton specifically said districts were informed there would be emphasis on grammar, punctuation and spelling that downplayed the prevailing pedagogy of so-called "whole language," which de-emphasizes those skills and relies on more free-flowing expression and such computer-based tools as spell-check.
Classroom instructors at districts contacted by Sunshine State News confirmed that DOE's tough message had been sent and received. But though the message was the same, not every district responded in the same way. In some cases, old instructional materials, and old thinking, prevailed -- to the detriment of students.
"It was clear you had to get a 4.0 instead of a 3.0 (to pass), but some districts were still stuck in what they've done in the past," a source told Sunshine State News on condition of anonymity.
Bowing to pressure from districts and parents, the state Board of Education, meeting in emergency session on Tuesday, voted to lower the passing score to 3.0 in an effort to hold districts "harmless." That nearly 20 percent inflation in the passing standard meant that roughly 80 percent of students would pass the test -- putting the passage rate nearly back to where it was in the 2011 exams.
But, as Sunshine State News previously reported, an inexplicable chasm has long existed between the lusty passing rates on FCAT writing tests and those of FCAT reading results, which historically run around 40 percent in elementary grades and the low 30 percent range in high school.
The results from the 2012 writing battery -- poor as they were -- were more closely aligned with the reading scores, which national test experts say is more scientifically credible. Students in fourth-, eighth- and 10th-grades sit for the writing tests, though passage is not required for grade advancement or graduation.
Amber Winkler, an education researcher with the Thomas B, Fordham Institute in New York City, said, "Like it or not, there are real consequences to raising expectations, including that many kids wont be able to meet those expectations initially, but it is best to ratchet them up than be content with the status quo or cave in to political pressure."
See the DOE's letter to school districts about the 2012 FCAT writing exam here.
Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
