{"id":1061,"date":"2009-06-06T08:41:52","date_gmt":"2009-06-06T12:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=1061"},"modified":"2009-07-29T17:56:26","modified_gmt":"2009-07-29T21:56:26","slug":"op-ed-noticed-by-education-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1061","title":{"rendered":"Op-ed noticed by Education Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Education Week blog Curriculum Matters picked up on my op-ed<\/a> that appeared in the St. Petersburg Times<\/a>. It’s gratifying to see our issues getting attention! However, Curriculum Matters misunderstood one thing:<\/p>\n

Haught, whose organization was heavily involved in the evolution fight, argues that scores from Florida’s science test, which is currently given at grades 5, 8, and 11, should also be used in determining whether students are retained in a grade and whether they graduate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, that’s not my argument. In this op-ed I was only pointing out the deficiencies in the FCAT and not advocating for using the FCAT in determing retention\/promotion. It makes more sense to dump the 11th-grade FCAT and possibly replace it with end-of-course tests as advocated here<\/a>. I did mention this in the op-ed, saying:<\/p>\n

State legislators attempted to address this problem through a bill that would have eliminated the 11th-grade science FCAT and possibly replaced it with some end-of-course tests. The bill failed to gain enough support and died.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would have liked to place greater emphasis on this point in the op-ed, but word count limitations forced me to be picky about what I wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Education Week blog Curriculum Matters picked up on my op-ed that appeared in the St. Petersburg Times. It’s gratifying to see our issues getting attention! However, Curriculum Matters misunderstood one thing: Haught, whose organization was heavily involved in the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-h7","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1056,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1056","url_meta":{"origin":1061,"position":0},"title":"11th-grade science FCAT vs. end-of-course exams","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 1, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The Orlando Sentinel education blog has a post up reporting that a group of concerned science professors is pushing hard to kill off the 11th-grade science FCAT and replace it with relevant end-of-course exams. We here at Florida Citizens for Science\u00c2\u00a0are also questioning the usefulness of the 11th grade science\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":413,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=413","url_meta":{"origin":1061,"position":1},"title":"Dropping the curriculum for FCAT","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 30, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"And now for some non-evolution science education news ... the FCAT is so dang important that regular science curriculum is being dropped in some schools in order to do an intense FCAT prep. (The FCAT is the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. It's a high stakes test that determines if kids\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the Classroom"","block_context":{"text":"In the Classroom","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1059,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1059","url_meta":{"origin":1061,"position":2},"title":"Op-ed: Is science education important to Florida?","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 4, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Earlier this week I submitted an op-ed column to newspapers across the state on behalf of Florida Citizens for Science. Today the Gainesville Sun ran it. The Sun even ran a political cartoon with the column! A couple of other papers expressed an interest in it, but I haven't gotten\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1059#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":97,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=97","url_meta":{"origin":1061,"position":3},"title":"Letter to the editor about science FCAT","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"November 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is an interesting letter to the editor about the science FCAT: As a science graduate and education specialist teaching science in high school, I find myself along with other teachers arresting our science curriculum in anatomy and physiology, physics, zoology, environmental science and chemistry to help our students either\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Analysis\/Commentary"","block_context":{"text":"Analysis\/Commentary","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=4"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1345,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1345","url_meta":{"origin":1061,"position":4},"title":"Science FCAT 2011","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Results for Florida\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s annual science exams taken by 3rd, 8th, and 11th graders were released today. The good news? Scores overall improved since last year. The bad news? The rise in scores is small, and 50 percent of our state\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s students aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t proficient in science. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m tired of being a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "FCAT"","block_context":{"text":"FCAT","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=22"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2469,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2469","url_meta":{"origin":1061,"position":5},"title":"DOE: Just fudge the results; no one cares about science anyway","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The Florida Department of Education released the results of statewide assessments yesterday. Unfortunately, there is a potential fib about the science results in the DOE's news release: Tallahassee, Fla., June 10 2016 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Commissioner of Education Pam Stewart today announced that Florida students are improving their performance on state assessments\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2469#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}