In the Spring of 2019, before the pandemic, 53% of 5th graders and 48% of 8th graders “passed” Florida’s Statewide Science Assessment (SSA) – that is, they earned scores of 3 or better on the 5-point scale used for the SSA.
This spring, only 48% of 5th graders and 45% of 8th graders “passed” the exam.
So science learning in Florida’s elementary and middle schools, at least as measured by the SSA, has not recovered to pre-COVID levels.
But I should share two points of further explanation and offer an apology for what I have written to this point.
The first point of further explanation is this: The reason I am only sharing results from 5th and 8th grades is that these are the only elementary and middle school grades for which science exams are required by federal law, and hence the only grades for which Florida offers statewide exams. Federal law requires statewide assessments in math and English language arts every year in elementary and middle school, but only requires science assessments in one elementary grade and one middle school grade.
(Federal law also requires a statewide science exam once during high school. Florida’s is the Biology end of course exam. As I remember it, the Biology end of course exam was chosen instead of an exam that covers multiple science subjects so that the exam could really be about measuring reading skills instead of science skills. But I digress.)
As for the second point of further explanation: I put “passed” in quotation marks in my first few sentences here because not only is the SSA not a high-stakes exam, it is not even a low-stakes exam. For the students, at least, the SSA is a no-stakes exam. Only the science teachers are punished if students do poorly.
And here is my apology – for burying the lede. The lede is this:
Fewer than half of Florida’s 5th and 8th graders “passed” the SSA. And nobody really cares.
Ten years ago, I served on a Florida Department of Education panel reviewing several of the state’s refurbished exams. The results of the pilot Geometry exam that we were reviewing were particularly awful, and we could have justified recommending cut scores (that is, the minimum raw scores required to earn grades of “2”, “3”, “4” and “5”) that would have resulted in far fewer than half of students earning passing (3 or above) grades. But all the panel members were keenly aware of the unrest that had resulted in New York State when only a quarter or so of students had earned passing grades on a statewide math exam there. In fact, as I remember it our panel quickly agreed that we should not set a cut score that would result in fewer than half of students passing the exam. So we chose a cut score that yielded a passing rate of something like 55%. The fallout was that students earning a grade of 3 knew very little geometry, but that wasn’t the most important issue. We wanted to prevent an uprising among parents.
That rule that more than half of students must pass a standardized exam to prevent a rebellion doesn’t seem to apply to Florida’s standardized science exams. The passing rates are below 50% – and were hovering in the same general vicinity even before the pandemic – and nobody cares.
Is “The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades” the theme song of the SSA? Maybe for a few students. But for most, “She Blinded Me With Science” would be more appropriate. And just about everybody seems OK with that.
Bridge to Tomorrow 