Florida's Funny Numbers

Posted 13 June 2016 by Wesley R. Elsberry

Brandon Haught at Florida Citizens for Science does a deeper dive on the educational assessments coming out of the Florida Department of Education (DOE). The DOE says that student performance in science improved by a percentage point this past year. Haught shows that they redefined science performance in order to have an improvement, no matter how slight.

5 Comments

Pierce R. Butler · 14 June 2016

Right now, I think combining the words "Florida" and "funny" produces too much cognitive dissonance for commenting.

DS · 16 June 2016

I'm curious as to how these scores compare to the scores in other states. They don't seem to be something you should generally be proud of. And instead of simply increasing or decreasing being the criteria, shouldn't there be some more objective criteria that could be used? After all, "we're slightly less dismal than we used to be" isn't really laudable.

Wesley R. Elsberry · 16 June 2016

The thing I've heard is that part of Florida not getting on board with things like NGSS and Common Core is that doing so would allow Florida student performance to be directly compared to student performance elsewhere. As long as Florida is unique, then how Florida's students are doing becomes a matter only of comparing to past performance.

eric · 16 June 2016

DS said: I'm curious as to how these scores compare to the scores in other states. They don't seem to be something you should generally be proud of. And instead of simply increasing or decreasing being the criteria, shouldn't there be some more objective criteria that could be used? After all, "we're slightly less dismal than we used to be" isn't really laudable.

True, but we (very rationally) don't hold political appointees responsible for the failures of their predecessors. So if some new appointee comes in and shows a +1% gain from crappy to slightly less crappy, they're still doing their job. This also answers the question of 'why fudge when its such a little gain on such a low number?' - because somebody's job or raise is linked to "demonstrating progress," not the absolute value of the score.

RJ · 22 June 2016

I've been checking out the Citizens' site and while I'm happy they are working for the welfare and education of Floridians, I'm not impressed by test score comparisons. Constant high-stakes standardized testing is a blight on your nation and to a lesser degree, mine.

Teachers and others have many excellent reasons for opposing such devices as Common Core, etc. While I'm sympathetic to all attempts to improve education and compare educational regimes, the supposed insight accrued by standardized tests is illusory.

It's pretty clear that the standardized test pushers are on the whole looking for an instrument with which to attack teachers, not to improve education. And thereby to transfer resources from real schools to charter test-taking factories ('schools').

The use of test scores to compare schools and educational regimes is pseudoscientific. It's like ID Creationism. So, while I am sincerely impressed with a number of the Florida Citizens folks, test scores are not evidence, according to me.