Florida makes sure that there are not too many A schools by adjusting standards yearly.

[madfloridian]

When everyone starts doing well, meeting set standards..they change them for the next year. Some say that is quite all right, but I think it would be very frustrating to students and teachers.

Crossposted in General Discussion.

Too many schools getting poor scores? Lower the standards. Are they trying to produce schools that look mediocre on paper? Yet in reality are quite excellent schools?

Start with 2012.

Test scores plummet — so Florida drops passing grade

Here’s the latest disaster in Florida’s standardized test-based school accountability system, which has been touted as a model for education reform around the country since it was developed by former Gov. Jeb Bush.

Florida gave a new standardized writing test to students in various grades and the scores were worse than awful. Only 27 percent of fourth-graders had proficient scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), which was down from last year’s 81 percent. Eighth graders and 10th graders also had dramatically lower scores than last year.

State education officials panicked, and at an emergency meeting last week, the Florida Board of Education decided in a 4-3 vote that the best thing to do was to lower the passing score on this exam.

Let me repeat that: In order to make sure that students succeeded on the test, the passing grade was lowered.

Last year many Florida schools scored very well. In fact too many were scoring A's to suit the powers that be. So for 2014 they raised the standards. That of course made it harder to get A's and B's as a school.

Number of top-rated high schools falls in Florida

Grades released by the Florida Department of Education showed that the number of A-graded schools dropped from 49 percent last year to 36 percent this year.

Education Commissioner Pam Stewart said a key reason for the drop in A-rated schools was that the grading formula was changed to make it more difficult to earn a top grade.

In one county that I know of the only high school making an A was a charter school that sends 12.5% of its students back to public schools because they don't meet the standards set by the charter school. That really makes it easy to get an A, just send back the ones who don't perform well.

Most of the high schools in that county made C's, and some A schools slipped down to B's.

Florida High School Grades, Graduation Rates Released: Six Schools Fall One Letter Grade

McKeel Academy of Technology in Lakeland earned the only A. Lakeland and George Jenkins high schools dropped from an A to a B. All other schools earned a C, except Tenoroc, which dropped to a D.

The grading scale used was tougher than the previous year's, which caused some schools to receive lower grades.

ADJUSTED UPWARD

The state Board of Education requires the scale to be adjusted upward when 75 percent or more of schools get A and B grades, as they did for 2012-13.