Alphabet soup of school testing spelled out

FCAT. A, B, C, D, F. AYP. NCLB. The alphabet soup of testing leaves some parents and taxpayers utterly confused.

The release of school report cards aims to gauge the performance of schools in Florida. But with two different, and often contradictory, accountability systems, it can be hard to understand how a school could earn an A from the state yet not make “adequate yearly progress” from the federal government.

Statewide, 28 percent of schools met standards set to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, down from 36 percent last year. The law, passed in 2001, requires all states to give standardized tests and review schools based on the scores. Every year, a greater percentage of students must be considered proficient.

But the test, and the standard of proficiency, are left up to individual states and vary widely. As Florida is required to raise its standards every year, a growing number of schools aren’t classified as up to par.

At the same time, more and more schools are earning As and Bs than ever under the state’s own School Grades program. That’s in part because scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test are rising and also because of the formula used to determine school grades.

The system takes into account both raw scores on the FCAT as well as gains made by individual students from one year to the next. If a school starts off with very low-scoring children and improves their performance significantly, it gets credit for that, even if the majority of kids still aren’t proficient. That’s because the system gives the school extra credit for helping the bottom 25 percent improve.

Although they don’t take learning gains into account, federal AYP regulations force districts to analyze how well schools educate different groups of children, including white, black, Hispanic, Asian, as well as those who qualify as low-income, disabled and those with limited English skills.

“There’s value in both,” said Richard Itzen, Lee County’s testing director. “The school grading system, people generally think is more fair because you’re given credit for doing an excellent job. The AYP system, its major benefit is to point out particular groups of children that maybe we need to focus on more.”