I didn't realize they had made the test more difficult this year. That is a big decrease in passing students from last year and obviously must be related to the change in the test to make it harder. I am not a big fan of the FCAT to begin with but it seems to me that it is kind of pointless to have tests like this if the standards can quickly be lowered when it is realized that not enough children are going to pass. Would love to know more about what they did to make the test harder this year and why.

Florida's standards for FCAT have always been higher than other states. That's why we don't seem to perform as well from a rankings perspective. Our students are performing just as well - or better - than students in other states, but people don't know that because it's harder for our students to score well due to our different standards.

Personally, I think it was wrong to make our standards higher in the first place. It puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on our students and schools (who have lots of pressure on them in the first place) and makes people think our system is failing when it's actually doing remarkably well. This, in turn causes businesses to not want to move here because of a gross misperception that the state doesn't seem to want to do anything about.

Interesting. I didn't realize our standards were higher than others states. Need to do more research on this.

I read the sample paper that scored a "3" on the essay in today's Tampa Bay Times. If that is an example of a "low 3" it appears to be adequate for a 4th grader who is writing a timed essay without resources (like a dictionary). If it is a "high 3," I would want to know what a "low 3" looks like. The main problem with all of this is that those educators who standardized the test may not have been experienced enough to do it well.