Florida officially ended traditional state-wide end-of year standardized testing. This was effective with the school year 2022-2023.
Standardized testing, typically held in the spring, measures students’ ability to apply the skills and knowledge they are supposed to have learned throughout the school year. This measure passed the Florida legislature as SB 1048. It was then signed Tuesday morning at a press conference.
Officially, Governor DeSantis has eliminated the FSA from all Florida public schools. https://t.co/JWWoUCfrAg
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 15, 2022
“Today we come not to praise the FSA but to bury it,” Governor Ron DeSantis said at the press event. “Next year, Florida will become the first state in the nation to do a full transition to progress monitoring to inform school accountability.”
Florida will switch from its Florida State Assessment (FSA), to be administered for the final time in this year’s session, to the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking. F.A.S.T. was announced by the governor. It will occur three times each year and will include tests that take several hours instead of days. The governor also said that student progress will be monitored and that individual growth will be encouraged.
“The 2022-2023 school year will serve as a new baseline for school accountability,” DeSantis said. “And school grades will resume the following year.”
“This will reduce the anxiety and stress for my children” says a mom of two girls about the end of #FSATesting in #Florida. Instead, it will implement progress monitoring systems. @abcactionnews #TampaBay #Education @GovRonDeSantis pic.twitter.com/EVVLIrbmSD
— Sarah J. Hollenbeck (@SarahHollenbeck) March 15, 2022
The controversial issue of standardized testing in education has long been debated. Although the standardized testing provides data to schools to help them assess students’ learning as well as to determine whether instruction was effective in the classroom, there have been critics who worry that teachers become too obsessed with passing the exam and are not spending enough time engaging their students in learning.
It’s such a big deal in education that Joe Biden promised in 2019 that he would work to ban it in public schools.
DeSantis previously stated that the FSA would be eliminated. There was positive feedback from everyone, even from teachers.
This plan will be implemented by the state education department for next year’s school year.
About Post Author
