Rick Scott created a little daylight between himself and Jeb Bush yesterday and admitted that students might be tested too much.
MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Gov. Rick Scott said on Friday schools might be doing too much of a good thing when it comes to student testing and he is talking with state education officials, school superintendents and teachers about possibly changing the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test……..
On student testing, Scott said the state received more parent complaints this year than in past years, especially about the FCAT.
“Parents and taxpayers expect measurement. We’ve got to measure, we’ve to find out who the best schools are,” Scott said. “We have to have a good measurement system but we have to make sure we don’t have too much of it.”
He said among the FCAT, federal testing and end-of-course exams, students might be tested too much. He said he is talking officials and teachers about what changes should be made.
“In the end I think it’s going to change a lot,” he said.
Until yesterday, Scott had left the defense of Florida’s test-based regime to his education commissioner, Gerard Robinson, and loyalists of Jeb Bush. His statement yesterday is at odds with what they’ve been saying.
Nonetheless, Scott is putting himself in a bit of a bind. His signature education legislation, the Student Success Act (SB736),mandates that 50% of evaluations of the state’s teacher’s come from the same tests he says kids are taking too much of.
