Governor Ron DeSantis has announced that they are crafting legislation for the upcoming legislative session to do away with the Florida Standards Assessment (FSA).
During a press conference at the Doral Academy Preparatory School, DeSantis said the 2021-2022 school year will be the last for the FSA.
DeSantis said, “We also have to recognize that it is the year 2021 and the FSA is quite frankly, outdated. It takes days to administer, leaving less time for student learning. It is not customizable to each student, which we do have the capability now with algorithms to do, it fails to provide timely information to parents, which as we know is very critical that that information be provided for them. It’s also too late for the modification of instruction, you take major tests at the end of the year, you get the results after the school year, so you can’t go back and fix that. So we are going to be ending that.”
DeSantis said it will be replaced with progress monitoring which many school districts are doing.
“The progress monitoring tools will be customizable and will even be unique to each student,” said DeSantis
“This is short individualized check-in assessments three times per year. This will take hours not days to be able to do these assessments. It has three different opportunities, fall, winter, and spring to be able to check in on growth. There’ll be 75 percent less time for testing, which will mean more time for learning. It also informs teachers in real-time during the school year, so they can better help students,” said DeSantis. He went on to say, “We believe that having results monitored and measured is very, very important. But we also think that the FSA is outmoded at this point and that we need to move forward with a more, I’d say, nimble and effective approach. And so this will be the last school year in terms of the FSA.”
Teachers all over Florida have turned to Facebook and have applauded DeSantis for ending the FSA.
The governor said the 2022-2022 school year will set the baseline for progress monitoring. After that, the results will determine grades.
DeSantis said that now, the curriculum should not be geared toward the FSA.