Testing, testing ... one, two, three, and here's the new test

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ announcement last Tuesday that he wants to end the Florida Standards Assessment annual exams was met with cheers and anxiety. 

Cheers because parents, students and teachers have long complained of Florida schools' emphasis on high-stakes standardized tests. Anxiety because parents, students and teachers are understandably concerned about what’s next. We’ve been down this road before.

We have seen the FCAT (1998-2010), the FCAT 2 (2011-2014), the Florida Standards Assessments (2015-2022). And now we can look forward to the FAST, the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking.

My kids were in middle school when the first wave of Florida high-stakes tests appeared on their desks. As motivation, the kids were told they’d repeat eighth grade if they flunked the FCAT. A horrifying possibility. Nobody likes being in eighth grade. We imagined years and years of eighth grade ahead of us.

And here I should mention that both my daughter and I deal with dyslexia. This is a learning disorder that makes reading slower, more error-prone and generally more difficult. People are said to outgrow it, but only in the sense that you get used to working around it — I avoid clocks with hands, pay close attention to spellcheck, and understand better than most that this “left and right” thing that people talk about is a matter of opinion.

These neural glitches happen because the parts of the brain that handle language for normal people get handed off to other parts of our brains. And like a lot of workarounds, it’s an imperfect solution. Don’t know why, just wired that way.

As a result, we both come off like knuckleheads on standardized tests and forms and know it. I don’t believe I would have gotten a high school diploma in the FCAT era, and my daughter, now grown, who has a master’s degree and works in the tech industry, was at first denied one because of her test scores.

This means I am not a neutral commentator about high-stakes testing. As much as I rejoiced on seeing the FCAT abandoned, the FCAT 2 was a lousy sequel. Similarly, I was delighted to see FCAT 2 fall by the wayside, but the Florida Standards Assessments that replaced it got caught up in the controversy over Common Core Standards.

The ideas behind Common Core were laudable: Develop benchmarks to give students from all parts of the country a common body of basic knowledge as an educational starting point; deemphasize mere test-taking tricks and memorization; encourage critical thinking. But in practice, it inspired more top-down testing mandates.

Conservatives hated Common Core because it was pushed by the Obama administration’s education department and was ideologically suspect; progressives hated it because it was more teach-by-the-numbers. So at last, here was an education policy that united people.

Less testing more often?

DeSantis came into office promising to dismantle the Common Core-tainted FSA and now he’s making good on that.

But as with all these past testing regimes, teachers and parents are happy to say good riddance but worry about what they’ll need to adapt to this time around.

The governor’s office says that instead of one big, make-or-break test, the new system would have three testing rounds spaced through the year. The claim is that there will be a 75% reduction in testing time. Time that could then be used to, you know, teach kids stuff. A welcome change.

Like FSA, the basic concept here has a lot of promise. What this translates to when the test sheets get passed out remains to be seen.

Will spreading the pain around the school be easier for students, or just mean that it will always feel like testing time? How will schools that are already facing the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic deal with the new disruption of upending their testing cycle? Will the last test of the year just turn into a new make-or-break test? What about smart kids who test dumb?

A lot of questions to be answered about the fourth wave of educational testing. I’m actually kind of optimistic, yet still glad my kids are grown and safely away from the testing cycle.

Mark Lane is a Daytona Beach News-Journal columnist.