Help me out here, please. FCAT scores were released this week. Of course, they snagged the media spotlight. But buried in there were supposedly the results of the Biology End of Course exams. This article says:
Scores also were released Friday for the writing portion of the FCAT — taken by students in fourth, eighth and 10th grades — as well as third-grade math and the end-of-course biology exams.
…
In Escambia County, 47 percent of the fourth-graders, 41 percent of the eighth-graders and 54 percent of the 10th-graders are proficient on the writing portion.
Additionally, 55 percent of the Escambia third-graders tested are proficient in reading and 52 percent are proficient in math.
Seventy percent of the students who took the end-of-course biology exam passed. That number is up from 61 percent in 2012.
So, the scores were obviously released. However, I can’t find them on the FDOE website anywhere. The Biology results currently posted were from last year (here’s the FDOE EOC page). Am I missing something?
I don’t know where to find the results. I do find it funny that they say “47 percent are proficient” when it really means that “53 percent are unable”. I also am guessing that “proficient” means able to get by. This is not an indictment of teachers– they can only do so much. Parents and students just don’t push writing. I can’t get my 14 year old niece to maintain a daily blog to save her life– and it will.
Brandon,
The Biology EOC results have been released at least to school officials, and I know at least that Hillsborough High School’s 2016 IB class had a 100% pass rate. Don’t know about anywhere else, though.
Kevin: “proficiency” is an arbitrary cut-point that we hope means arbitrary in the sense of arbitration and making a reasoned decision instead of arbitrary and capricious. See http://shermandorn.com/wordpress/?p=1752 for my broader take on setting achievement level thresholds.