An appeals court has now determined that Florida parents don't have a right to see where their students are going wrong on standardized tests, but Gov. Jeb Bush shouldn't be so eager to gloat. His win comes at the expense of students who are being held back without really knowing why.
The governor portrayed his opposition to disclosing FCAT test materials as consistent with "the Department of Education's 20-year policy on test confidentiality," but that's a little disingenuous. Until four years ago, DOE never used a standardized test to grade and punish schools. Until last spring, it never used a state test of such complexity to decide whether high school seniors could graduate. Until this fall, it never used a state test to decide whether third-graders should be promoted or retained.
Because Florida has so dramatically increased the stakes associated with one test, it owes students and teachers a better understanding of how they are performing. It also owes them better assurance that testing error didn't lead to grave consequences in their lives.
In 1999, according to a recent Boston College study, a question from a Tennessee education statistician led to the discovery of incorrect scores for 250,000 students in six states. Those mistakes merely affected statistics; errors in FCAT scoring could unjustly flunk a 9-year-old.
At least four other states already release test questions to students, and the educational logic is so compelling that Bush's own lieutenant governor, Frank Brogan, committed two years ago to doing the same in Florida. But Brogan is now president of Florida Atlantic University, and his promise apparently no longer counts.
The state does have a legitimate concern about the security of FCAT results and the costs of producing new test questions each year if the old ones are made public. But the interesting thing about the recent 1st District Court of Appeal decision is how the appellate judges chided the trial judge whose opinion they overturned.
They criticized Circuit Judge Janet Ferris for trying to provide "meaningful access" for families through a supervised review of the test without the possibility for copying it. In other words, Ferris was seeking a compromise, hoping to help a Pinellas high school student and his family figure out where he's going wrong without unduly compromising test security.
Ferris' effort may or may not have constituted proper jurisprudence, but it is clearly sound education policy. This fight never belonged in the courts in the first place, and might have been avoided if the governor weren't so stubborn. Anxious families are just looking for some guidance on a test that affects the lives of their sons and daughters. Why is it impossible to find a workable middle ground?
