The Orlando Sentinel picks up on my previous post about a bill proposing to do away with the 11th grade science FCAT, and talks about end-of-course exams.
Florida educational leaders have indicated support for end-of-the-year exams in high school. They think testing what students learned at the end of a course in, say, biology or chemistry, could make more sense than testing knowledge on lots of subjects — 2/3’s of the way through 11th grade (FCAT being given in early March).
New York State has been offering end-of-course Regents Exams for more than a century. If you are interested, you might try looking at examples of the exams themselves at
http://www.nysedregents.org/testing/hsregents.html
The “Regents Examinations, Regents Competency Tests, and Proficiency Examinations School Administrator’s Manual 2001 Edition” which, despite its awful title, has a useful general introduction:
http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/osa/hsinfogen/hsinfogenarch/sam2001.pdf
The standards on which the exams are based can be found at
http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/cores.htm