What the Bill Does
- Senate Bill 886 removes certain high-stakes consequences from standardized tests administered during the 2020-2021 school year.
- Tests administered for the current school year may not be used for the purposes of
- evaluations of instructional personnel,
- third grade retention, or
- high school graduation.
- Additionally, no school would be required to implement a turnaround option based on test scores from the 2020-21 school year.
- Schools currently operating under a turnaround plan would not be subject to sanctions or penalties that otherwise might have resulted based on their school grade.
What’s Next
SB 886 has passed its first committee. Its next stop will be in the Education Appropriations Subcommittee. We’ll let you know when it’s place on the agenda.
Companion Bill
Vote History
3/2/21 Senate Education Committee: 9-1, with Sen. Manny Diaz, Jr. casting the no vote.
Our Position
We support this bill in its current form.
Talking Points
- Robust progress monitoring is already occurring for all students, regardless of whether they are learning remotely, face-to-face or a hybrid option.
- Progress monitoring has been ongoing all school year and provides immediate, actionable feedback. The feedback from the Florida Standards Assessment (FSA) is neither immediate nor actionable. As such, any time spent preparing for or taking the FSA is valuable time that would better be spent teaching and learning.
- There has been nothing standard about this school year, and we should not pretend these are normal times when it comes to use of standardized test scores.
- Using standardized test scores to inform decisions regarding student retention, student graduation, or teacher evaluations is fraught with problems even during the best of timed. Using these tests as punitive measures during a pandemic is a slap in the face to all the students and educators who have already sacrificed so much over the past year.
Video Updates
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