High-stakes testing has been part of Florida public education for years, but now, Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho says the state has taken a laudable desire for accountability to extremes.
For example, the state wants to create end-of-course exams for every class: music, art, dance, all of them. Carvalho called that mandate "insane" at Wednesday’s school board meeting, and vowed not to heed it.
“If there was underwater basket weaving, there would be an end of course exam for that too. It has gone too far,” Carvalho said, asserting that the state's mandate has nothing to do with educating students and everything to do with creating a measuring stick which could be used to evaluate teachers, even if the test isn't a true measure of what a student learned in that course.
The meeting's major point of discussion was assessment tests in general, and every school board member who spoke up agreed that students are being asked to take too many assessments.
"There is a viable concern among parents about too much testing," said Board Member Raquel Regalado. “One of the things that we wish people would do is ask their state reps and senators about testing, because they always ask us about it, but nobody asks the people who make the decisions about it.”
Carvalho wrote an op-ed article for the Miami Herald in which he outlined the reforms he thinks are necessary to make the assessment exams fair throughout Florida. Carvalho spoke about his ideas at the meeting, presenting what could be called his manifesto for change. The Board voted to adopt his recommendations as official Board policy.
“There is a difference between true and reasonable assessment, and unreasonable over-testing, and that is the key here,” Carvalho said, emphasizing that assessment tests, in his view, are a useful tool when they're fair.
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The superintendent said change has to start at the federal level with what he calls, “inflexible, flawed mandates” for assessment testing. Carvalho said the State of Florida is going way too fast in pushing a new test to replace the FCAT.
The FCAT was phased out this year with the full implementation of the Common Core curriculum, which has been tweaked and rebranded by the state as the Florida Standards.
“This rush to roll out the new assessment to simply comply with existing statute is wrong,” Carvalho said. “I think we need to have the courage to press the pause button and fix it before we proceed. They’re rushing something through just to get it done.”
Carvalho said it’s ridiculous to test questions for the new assessment in Utah, not in Florida, but that’s what is happening. The superintendent also said there’s no way to fairly grade schools and teachers in the first year of a new test.
“For a fair determination of student performance or teacher performance, you need to be able to compare today’s data with last year’s date,” explained Carvalho. “Now you fill in the blank for me: what data? It doesn’t exist because this is a new exam.”
The answer, he says, is for the state to give school districts a transition period to get up to speed with the new curriculum and the new tests before the new exams are used to slap a grade on a school, or to determine a teacher's performance.
Carvalho said he would not emulate Lee County, which announced it was "opting out" of the required state assessments. The county voted Tuesday to rescind the vote to opt-out of the state assessment tests after learning about potential penalties that it would incur.
Carvalho said going back to the days when there were no assessment tests at all would be a foolish step backward. Board Member Carlos Curbelo agreed saying in those days of no accountability, officials could turn a blind eye to a struggling school, which usually meant schools in the inner city, as long as the schools in more affluent areas were perceived as doing well.
"For anyone to take us back to the days when we only cared about how some schools are doing is ludicrous," Curbelo said.
Carvalho said he will continue to advocate for reforms in the assessment process, to make it, for example, fair to kids with disabilities, students who are just learning English, and to the teachers who teach those students. He thinks he's going to eventually win the fight.
"The state is beginning to recognize that the accountability system in Florida has gone too far, too fast, detaching itself from the people it's supposed to serve: teachers, students, and parents, and I think what we're seeing now is a rapid regression to reason," Carvalho said.
