FCAT Science

There has been talk amongst Florida law­mak­ers over the last sev­eral years to replace high school FCATs with end-of-course exams. It looks like this pro­posal may become a real­ity. A bipar­ti­san group of state law­mak­ers is mov­ing for­ward this leg­isla­tive ses­sion with a plan to replace the high school FCAT test with a series of stan­dard­ized end-of-course exams. The House and Sen­ate edu­ca­tion com­mit­tees plan to jointly intro­duce bills next month. Law­mak­ers believe the pro­posed bill will mod­ern­ize high school account­abil­ity as well as hav­ing stu­dents be assessed with spe­cific tests to cover spe­cific classes ver­sus the exist­ing 11th-grade FCAT sci­ence exam which is not tied to any spe­cific sci­ence class. How­ever, indi­vid­u­als have raised con­cerns that get­ting rid of the FCAT and replac­ing it with another test may not be any bet­ter. Mary­land, Mis­sis­sippi, New York, Ten­nessee, and Vir­ginia began using end-of-course exams in 2009. Texas is in the process of devel­op­ing tests in Eng­lish, Sci­ence, His­tory, and Math for ninth-11th graders grad­u­a­tion require­ments by 2011. If the bill is approved, the pro­posed test­ing change would likely begin with math next year, fol­lowed by sci­ence and read­ing, with the goal of mak­ing a com­plete tran­si­tion within four years. Stu­dents would have to pass the exams to earn course credit, and the courses would become grad­u­a­tion require­ments. Thus, instead of tak­ing a math FCAT in ninth grade, stu­dents would take an exam after com­plet­ing Alge­bra I. Source St. Peters­burg Times, Wednes­day, Jan­u­ary 27, 2010 Is FCAT on the way out? by Jef­frey S. Solochek and Ron Matus, Times Staff Writ­ers. For fur­ther details on the pro­posed bill see the fol­low­ing arti­cle .

High­lights of the bill expected to be pre­sented in the next few weeks:

• Sub­sti­tute an end-of-course Alge­bra I exam for ninth-grade FCAT math
• Sub­sti­tute an end-of-course geom­e­try exam for 10th grade FCAT math
• Sub­sti­tute end-of-course Biol­ogy I exam for 11th-grade FCAT science
• Require pas­sage of end-of-course exams to earn credit in those three courses, which would become grad­u­a­tion requirements
• Imple­ment lower-stakes end-of-course exams for English/Language Arts II, Alge­bra II, Chem­istry, Physics, Earth/Space Sci­ence, U.S. His­tory and World His­tory as money is available.

Source Florida House Pre-K-12 Pol­icy Committee 

http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Committees/committeesdetail.aspx?CommitteeId=2462&sessionId=64

Gov­er­nor Char­lie Crist signed Florida’s appli­ca­tion for more than $700 mil­lion of the $4.35 bil­lion fed­eral dol­lars that will be avail­able through Race to the Top funds. Race to the Top is the largest-ever fed­eral com­pet­i­tive invest­ment in school reform. The U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion is review­ing the appli­ca­tions, win­ners will be announced for the first round of fund­ing by April.

If Florida is awarded the funds, half of the awarded funds will go to the 59 school dis­tricts, as well as three lab schools, and the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind that signed onto to become a part of the reform. The remain­der of the funds will go directly to the state (Tal­la­has­see) to sup­port state-level projects ben­e­fit­ing all school districts.

The fund­ing will be used in the fol­low­ing areas:

Cur­ricu­lum Standards

Assess­ments of Stu­dent Learning

Increased Use of Data (one-stop data crunch­ing for the entire state for use by teach­ers and dis­trict staff).

Teacher and Leader Qual­ity and

Assis­tance for Strug­gling Schools

For com­plete details on Florida’s Race to the Top Grant visit Florida’s Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act  site.

A coali­tion of edu­ca­tors, sci­en­tists, engi­neers, and phil­an­thropies announced the launch­ing of National Lab Day. A new grass­roots ini­tia­tive designed to rein­vig­o­rate sci­ence and math edu­ca­tion in the nation’s schools and after-school pro­grams which will is hoped to ulti­mately lead to increased U.S. com­pet­i­tive­ness.
The goal of the ini­tia­tive is to improve the qual­ity of Sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy, engi­neer­ing, and math (STEM) edu­ca­tion in Amer­ica. A col­lab­o­ra­tion between the gov­ern­ment and more than 200 public-and pri­vate sec­tor orga­ni­za­tions, National Lab Day will con­nect stu­dents in grades 6–12 to hands-on learn­ing expe­ri­ences and pro­mote tin­ker­ing in lab­o­ra­tory set­tings. National Lab Day is a New York-based edu­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to improv­ing sci­ence and math edu­ca­tion nation­wide. National Lab Day wel­comes new part­ner­ships and can be reached at info@nationallabday.org. For fur­ther details on the National Lab Day ini­tia­tive please see the fol­low­ing link to the National Lab Day Orga­ni­za­tion web­site. http://www.nationallabday.org/

Pres­i­dent Obama announced a $250 mil­lion public-private com­bi­na­tion effort to improve sci­ence and math­e­mat­ics instruc­tion. The goal of the ini­tia­tive is to help the United States com­pete in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing fields with global eco­nomic com­peti­tors. The fund­ing will pre­pare more than 10,000 new math and sci­ence teach­ers teach­ers over the next five years, and pro­vide on-the-job train­ing for an addi­tional 100,000 teach­ers in STEM fields. I am hop­ing that the state of Florida ben­e­fits from this inia­tive via pro­vid­ing addi­tional and much needed qual­ity hands-on pro­fes­sional staff devel­op­ment for math and sci­ence teach­ers. For fur­ther details on the ini­tia­tive see the arti­cle by Nick Ander­son, Wash­ing­ton Post Staff Writer in the fol­low­ing link “>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/06/AR2010010602063.html”>