Ruling opens FCAT test record to parent

Although the ruling affects only one Pinellas parent, it may open the records to any Florida parents.

By STEPHEN HEGARTY, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published October 3, 2002

In a ruling that might force the state to open its FCAT files to parents across the state, a Pinellas County man on Wednesday won the right to examine his son's FCAT test booklet and answer sheet.

A Leon County Circuit judge agreed with parent Steve Cooper that the state had to provide the documents.

Cooper's son, who attends Largo High School, is in danger of not getting a standard diploma because he has failed the state's FCAT graduation test. That's why his guardian, the late Betty Shields, sued to get copies of the boy's FCAT answer sheets. She wanted to see which questions he got wrong and to double check to see that the state scored the test properly.

"Right now, the ruling just affects one parent, but any parent could make the same request," said Mark Herdman, the plaintiff's lawyer who argued the case.

Circuit Judge Janet Ferris closed the case on Wednesday, but retained jurisdiction to decide how the documents would be provided. Herdman simply argued that they are education records and that a student's parent or guardian should be able to request and receive copies.

It was not clear late Wednesday if the decision would be appealed.

The ruling is a first for Florida, and could force the state to join other states that make test materials more public. Florida makes several test questions public after the test, but not the entire test. And parents now receive limited samples of their children's work, such as one written answer on a reading test.

By contrast, Massachusetts posts its state test questions and answers on a Web site shortly after the test is given. What follows is a debate over the difficulty or ease of questions. Sometimes parents, or even students, discover that the state erroneously marked some answers wrong.

The ruling Wednesday does not mean that a student's test results are public. They remain confidential. But Herdman argued that they are educational records to which only a parent or guardian has access.

If the ruling stands, it could place a significant burden on the state to retrieve booklets and answer sheets for specific children. State officials have long argued that it would be too expensive to reveal all the test questions, because it would force the state to remake tests each year.

In some ways, the case seemed inevitable because of the high stakes attached to the FCAT test. This year's senior class is the first group of children who have had to pass the state's 10th-grade FCAT test to get a standard diploma.

Betty Shields, the original plaintiff who sued on behalf of her godson, died in November. In April, Steve Cooper, the boy's father, took over as the plaintiff.

-- Researchers Kitty Bennett and Cathy Wos contributed to this report.

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