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