Fantastic Florida
"10th grade reading scores are declining," the Miami Herald warned in June of 2004. "Broward [County] kids slip in FCAT reading," the paper reiterated a year later. Yet while things look pretty dismal in Florida -- a state where nearly a third of 4th graders can't pass the reading assessment and less than half of 8th graders can -- the actual story is far more frightening. Come, if you dare, down a path where tens of thousands of Florida schoolchildren are nearing the horizon of their public education barely able to read.
The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, is not the most rigorous test in the country. 28% more Florida 4th graders were passing proficient on the FCAT reading test in 2003 as on the reading test of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), a nationally recognized benchmark of rigor. In 8th grade math, 33% more kids passed the FCAT than the NAEP (Source: Education Trust education watch state summary).
Worse yet is in high school, where the FCAT is a required graduation exit exam which can be taken up to six times between 10th grade and 12th grade. Here, the test is even weaker. According to a study done by the Florida Department of Education, a student who passed both the high school FCAT math and reading with the minimum passing scale scores of 300 would recieve a 410 verbal and 370 math on the SAT, or a 780 composite.
Chew on that one for a moment. You can graduate from high school in Florida while performing more than 200 points lower than the national average on the SAT. A 780 (or the equivalent 15 composite ACT score) doesn't get you into a single decent state college; not the University of Florida, Florida State University, University of Miami, Northern Florida University, Florida A&M or Florida Gulf Coast University. But Florida's average SAT score is only about 50 points lower than the national average (FL is at nearly 1000), so what's the problem?
The problem is, a mind-blowing number of kids aren't passing the FCAT. A mere 32% of students passed the grade 10 reading test on the first try in 2005, with African-Americans checking in at a distressing 13% and Latinos at 22%. We're not talking just missing by a hair, either; back in 2003, when a third of all 10th graders were passing proficient (level 3 or above), an equal third were wallowing in level 1.
167,000 students took the 10th grade test in 2003 (Source: Florida DOEd). So, put another way, 105,210 10th graders couldn't even get a 410 SAT verbal!
105,210. That's the population of New Haven, CT, or Ann Arbor, MI. Surely though, the story isn't actually THAT bad. Well, Florida doesn't release cumulative pass rates (the percent of students passing when all six tries are thrown together), but it does report the pass rate of 12th graders taking the FCAT; essentially, the last-chancers. Here, we have nearly 19,000 students taking the reading test, and 20% of them passing. That leaves approximately 15,200 Florida 12th graders failing, after six tries and countless support measures, to pass a rudimentary reading test. 15,200 -- the size of the undergraduate population of my own University of Virginia. So take U.Va., except replace it with kids who can hardly read.
So how can Florida's average SAT score be so solid while its average FCAT scale score hovers at the 410 SAT verbal level? Simple: The situation is actually worse than it looks; the high-performing kids (the ones who are actually taking the SAT and going to college, hence the decent scores) are yanking the average FCAT score up.
According to the College Board, 87,000 Florida high schoolers took the SAT in 2004. Their average score on the verbal section was ~500, which equates to a 331 on the FCAT. Since the entire test-taking population in 10th grade was 167,000, that means that the non-SAT takers had to be averaging at best a 261 to come up with the actual state average of 296.
Oh, but you say, the SAT takers were mostly juniors and seniors, the FCAT takers sophmores. True enough, but even if you pretend the SAT takers were getting 450 on their verbal (which is 311 on the FCAT), you're still looking at a 281 for the non-SAT test takers.
How bad is a 281, or a 261? We're talking 350-300 verbal SAT. We're talking, can barely read. We're talking, these are the 45% of Florida kids who don't graduate.
To say that Florida is failing its kids is a gross understatement. Florida is flat-out neglecting its kids. But while this post focuses on Florida, the crisis isn't isolated to the Sunshine State. To say that scores are up or down, or to say that a certain percentage of students are failing, means nothing unless you can put it in terms of severity. The media must help us understand that average scores don't necessarily mean most kids are huddled around the middle and furthermore that the scores are meaningless in an absolute sense unless linked to specific degrees of knowledge. If you can be "proficient" with a 780 composite SAT, "proficiency" cannot be assumed to be a legitimate term.
Step back -- this is one state, one of fifty. It has 80,000 kids who can't read at a reasonable level and 17,000 who can't pass a rudimentary test on the sixth go-around. Tens of thousands of actual people whose prospects and potential are being stunted by an education system that is damaged to the core.
And that's just one state.
Do we need high standards? Hell yes. They just need to be a whole lot higher and a whole lot more effective than they are right now.
The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, is not the most rigorous test in the country. 28% more Florida 4th graders were passing proficient on the FCAT reading test in 2003 as on the reading test of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), a nationally recognized benchmark of rigor. In 8th grade math, 33% more kids passed the FCAT than the NAEP (Source: Education Trust education watch state summary).
Worse yet is in high school, where the FCAT is a required graduation exit exam which can be taken up to six times between 10th grade and 12th grade. Here, the test is even weaker. According to a study done by the Florida Department of Education, a student who passed both the high school FCAT math and reading with the minimum passing scale scores of 300 would recieve a 410 verbal and 370 math on the SAT, or a 780 composite.
Chew on that one for a moment. You can graduate from high school in Florida while performing more than 200 points lower than the national average on the SAT. A 780 (or the equivalent 15 composite ACT score) doesn't get you into a single decent state college; not the University of Florida, Florida State University, University of Miami, Northern Florida University, Florida A&M or Florida Gulf Coast University. But Florida's average SAT score is only about 50 points lower than the national average (FL is at nearly 1000), so what's the problem?
The problem is, a mind-blowing number of kids aren't passing the FCAT. A mere 32% of students passed the grade 10 reading test on the first try in 2005, with African-Americans checking in at a distressing 13% and Latinos at 22%. We're not talking just missing by a hair, either; back in 2003, when a third of all 10th graders were passing proficient (level 3 or above), an equal third were wallowing in level 1.
167,000 students took the 10th grade test in 2003 (Source: Florida DOEd). So, put another way, 105,210 10th graders couldn't even get a 410 SAT verbal!
105,210. That's the population of New Haven, CT, or Ann Arbor, MI. Surely though, the story isn't actually THAT bad. Well, Florida doesn't release cumulative pass rates (the percent of students passing when all six tries are thrown together), but it does report the pass rate of 12th graders taking the FCAT; essentially, the last-chancers. Here, we have nearly 19,000 students taking the reading test, and 20% of them passing. That leaves approximately 15,200 Florida 12th graders failing, after six tries and countless support measures, to pass a rudimentary reading test. 15,200 -- the size of the undergraduate population of my own University of Virginia. So take U.Va., except replace it with kids who can hardly read.
So how can Florida's average SAT score be so solid while its average FCAT scale score hovers at the 410 SAT verbal level? Simple: The situation is actually worse than it looks; the high-performing kids (the ones who are actually taking the SAT and going to college, hence the decent scores) are yanking the average FCAT score up.
According to the College Board, 87,000 Florida high schoolers took the SAT in 2004. Their average score on the verbal section was ~500, which equates to a 331 on the FCAT. Since the entire test-taking population in 10th grade was 167,000, that means that the non-SAT takers had to be averaging at best a 261 to come up with the actual state average of 296.
Oh, but you say, the SAT takers were mostly juniors and seniors, the FCAT takers sophmores. True enough, but even if you pretend the SAT takers were getting 450 on their verbal (which is 311 on the FCAT), you're still looking at a 281 for the non-SAT test takers.
How bad is a 281, or a 261? We're talking 350-300 verbal SAT. We're talking, can barely read. We're talking, these are the 45% of Florida kids who don't graduate.
To say that Florida is failing its kids is a gross understatement. Florida is flat-out neglecting its kids. But while this post focuses on Florida, the crisis isn't isolated to the Sunshine State. To say that scores are up or down, or to say that a certain percentage of students are failing, means nothing unless you can put it in terms of severity. The media must help us understand that average scores don't necessarily mean most kids are huddled around the middle and furthermore that the scores are meaningless in an absolute sense unless linked to specific degrees of knowledge. If you can be "proficient" with a 780 composite SAT, "proficiency" cannot be assumed to be a legitimate term.
Step back -- this is one state, one of fifty. It has 80,000 kids who can't read at a reasonable level and 17,000 who can't pass a rudimentary test on the sixth go-around. Tens of thousands of actual people whose prospects and potential are being stunted by an education system that is damaged to the core.
And that's just one state.
Do we need high standards? Hell yes. They just need to be a whole lot higher and a whole lot more effective than they are right now.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, August 21, 2005 at 4:57 PM.
|
