Miami Herald: Tampering With School Grade Formula “Unfair” and Causes “An Inaccurate and Misleading Portrayal”
From the editors of the Miami Herald:
Too many students are being set up to think they are failures by the very people who say they are pushing students to excel. Their teachers will see their hard work in front of the class undercut. And parents will think, wrongly, that their children are attending substandard schools.
In a state system that rewards high-scoring schools with more money and penalizes lower-performing schools by withholding funds, the new state standards will do damage not just to institutions of learning. The quality of schools is a large factor in home values. An “A” school that plummets to a “C” will ding values throughout a neighborhood.
Florida wants its students to perform ever better on standardized tests such as the FCAT — a