Testing revolt brews in Florida as Miami schools chief urges delay in new exams

In Florida, the state where former governor Jeb Bush (R) pioneered the use of high-stakes standardized tests for school “accountability” purposes, a testing revolt is unfolding.

Late last month, the Lee County school board voted to drop all state-mandated tests as an act of “civil disobedience,” though the vote was rescinded because of fear that students would suffer the consequences.

Then Miami-Dade County Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho (who was, incidentally, named the 2014 National Superintendent of the Year) blasted state testing policy and called for a delay in administering new high-stakes standardized tests across the state, saying in this statement:

The state must own and address over-assessment. Instructional time is too precious to spend it assessing students on duplicative measures. Assessment of students should serve the strict purpose of informing instruction, not simply provide a variable into a teacher’s performance evaluation formula, as is the case of the new state-mandated, district-designed end-of-course K-12 exams.

And the Florida School Boards Association has begun considering motions that would call on the state to change its testing policies.

As of last night, 658 principals around the state had signed a letter — 488 of them from Long Island, where the insurrection began — protesting the use of students’ test scores to evaluate teachers’ and principals’ performance.

It is hard to overstate how angry the principals who signed are. Mario Fernandez, principal of Stillwater High School near Saratoga, called the evaluation process a product of “ludicrous, shallow thinking.”

Katie Zahedi, principal of Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook in Dutchess County. said the training session she attended was “two days of total nonsense.”

“I have a Ph.D., I’m in a school every day, and some consultant is supposed to be teaching me to do evaluations,” she said. “It takes your breath away it’s so awful.”

“It’s education by humiliation,” Mr. Kaplan said. “I’ve never seen teachers and principals so degraded.”