Monthly Archives: September 2015

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal government requires that high school students take one statewide standardized test in science.  In Florida, that test is the Biology end of course examination.  Yesterday, I argued that the Biology end … Continue reading →

As expected, Florida Education Commissioner Pam Stewart has recommended cut scores and passing rates for the FSA exams in English and math that are very close to those recommended by the Educator and Reactor panels (see the School Zone report … Continue reading →

With Senators Gaetz and Legg looking at the possibility of changing high school test requirements (see the Tampa Bay Times report), it’s worth briefly reviewing why Florida should make the ACT the official state test for accountability purposes: The ACT and … Continue reading →

WFSU’s News Director Lynn Hatter talked with Florida State Board of Education Vice Chair John Padget, Foundation for Excellence in Education CEO Patricia Levesque, and me about setting the cut scores (and therefore the passing rates) on last spring’s FSA … Continue reading →

Originally posted on Bridge to Tomorrow:
From the 2015 edition of the report “The Economic Value of College Majors”, released earlier this year by the Georgetown Center on Economics and the Workforce, here are the top 25 college majors ranked by…

Why are some Florida State Board of Education members convinced that the FSA scoring scales proposed by two panels – one made up of teachers (the “educator panel”) and the other made up of representatives from business and higher education … Continue reading →

When a standardized test is given for the first time, the psychometricians who administer the test conduct a rather involved process to decide how to convert students’ raw test scores into achievement level designations like the 1 through 5 scales … Continue reading →

The source for these numbers is the Florida Board of Governors Interactive University Database.

Consider this lead from an article in Sunday’s New York Times: DOES the college lecture discriminate? Is it biased against undergraduates who are not white, male and affluent? And the concluding paragraph: Given that active-learning approaches benefit all students, but … Continue reading →

My piece on using the ACT for federal accountability purposes at the high school level instead of Florida’s present testing program was published in this morning’s Tallahassee Democrat. I’ll add a few points to what was published.  First of all, much of … Continue reading →