The Florida House of Representatives has passed a bill that reduces state testing requirements. The bill eliminates the new Florida Standards Assessments test for high school juniors. The bill also removes a requirement for local final exams in subjects other than math and language arts. But some Democrats say the bill doesn’t go far enough. They want the state to not use this year’s test results for public school grades or to judge student or teacher performance.
Representative Mia Jones of Jacksonville says the state shouldn’t issue public school grades or make students decisions based on the new test results.
“But when we know that we have already seen that there have been challenges in using this tool, then we know that we need to do something before we put a grade on a school”, said Jones.
A similar Senate bill on testing has big differences from the House version. The Senate bill would cap total testing time. And if school districts have tech problems with the new online exam, the Senate bill would allow those districts to not use test results for public school grades or to judge student performance.