{"id":871,"date":"2009-01-20T13:59:43","date_gmt":"2009-01-20T18:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=871"},"modified":"2009-02-28T14:13:39","modified_gmt":"2009-02-28T19:13:39","slug":"lawmaker-wants-to-dump-11th-grade-science-fcat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=871","title":{"rendered":"Lawmaker wants to dump 11th grade science FCAT"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, House Bill 543<\/a>, “Educational Assessment”, was filed by Representative Debbie Mayfield<\/a> (R). The bill text indicates that Mayfield would like to see a major change to the science FCAT.<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding s. 1008.22, Florida Statutes, or any other provision of the law to the contrary, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in science administered to students in grade 11 shall be discontinued at the end of the 2008-2009 school year. Beginning with the 2009-2010 school year, the science assessment administered at the high school level shall be one or more end-of-course examinations. The Commissioner of Education shall select one or more nationally developed comprehensive assessments for use as end-of-course examinations. An end-of-course examination must be rigorous and standardized, approved by the State Board of Education, and administered statewide. The content knowledge and skills assessed by an end-of-course examination must be aligned to the core curricular content established in the Sunshine State Standards.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t know what Mayfield’s reason for the bill is. However, it seems to make sense. Keep in mind that science FCATs carry no repercussions for students who fail it, but do affect the schools’ grades. So, it would make sense that there would be a desire to do away with the stress. Kids have been bribed by schools to take and pass this test. See a previous post about this here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ipods, prom tickets, limo rides \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the prizes offered at American one morning last week are meant to motivate 11th-graders into taking and doing well on the upcoming FCAT science exam. While the scores won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t affect their state graduation requirements, they will count, for the first time, toward school grades.<\/p>\n

Now some South Florida educators find themselves trying to entice 16-year-olds \u00e2\u20ac\u201d even if it borders on a bit of bribery. At Michael Krop Senior High, students who score Level 3 or higher on the the science FCAT will get to sport shorts to class.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u009dThere are a lot of kids who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care because they know it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Clifton Forbes, a junior at American.<\/p>\n

That attitude is what concerns officials most.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s your take? Good idea or bad?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, House Bill 543, “Educational Assessment”, was filed by Representative Debbie Mayfield (R). The bill text indicates that Mayfield would like to see a major change to the science FCAT. Notwithstanding s. 1008.22, Florida Statutes, or any other provision of … 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":[22],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-e3","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1015,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1015","url_meta":{"origin":871,"position":0},"title":"Physics made a comeback","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"April 24, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This is an update to Jonathan's earlier post tracking bills related to science education. Physics made a comeback on the floor of the Florida House of Representatives late yesterday afternoon.\u00c2\u00a0 Late the previous night, Representative Fresen, sponsor of the House graduation requirements bill (HB 1293), filed an amendment to put\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1015#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1012,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1012","url_meta":{"origin":871,"position":1},"title":"Politics Trump Physics","author":"Jonathan Smith","date":"April 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Despite the good faith efforts of three representatives to improve the bills on high school science assessment and graduation requirements, today's events in the Florida House of Representatives demonstrated how difficult it can be to get education policy right in a challenging legislative environment.\u00c2\u00a0 Representative Fresen, the sponsor of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1012#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1201,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1201","url_meta":{"origin":871,"position":2},"title":"2010 Science FCAT and beyond","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The annual Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test results are finally released. These are exams that students across the state in specific grade levels must take in core subjects. These scores can influence students\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 promotion to the next grade, and dictate what the student can or cannot take the next school year,\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1201#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1059,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1059","url_meta":{"origin":871,"position":3},"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":137,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=137","url_meta":{"origin":871,"position":4},"title":"Science on the FCAT; More Fs?","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Changes to this year's FCATs, including the importance of the science tests, are prompting dire school grade predictions. There could be a record number of failing schools in Duval County and around Florida this year unless local school districts find a way to improve student achievement in two categories being\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":2771,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2771","url_meta":{"origin":871,"position":5},"title":"Science assessment scores “remained consistent”? Seriously?","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 9, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The results are in for the many mandatory statewide tests Florida's students take every year. Headlines in newspapers across the state emphasized language arts and math scores, which overall improved over last year's results. That's good news. But science? Here's what the Florida Department of Education's press release announcing all\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871"}],"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=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}