Testing in Florida is nothing but a scam
There has been some concern about what will happen to teachers if too many kids opt-out, will they not get their growth scores and be eligible for raises? Some have mentioned their schools may lose funding too. I don’t believe we should worry about these things. Everyone knows that high-stakes testing is bad for public education; everyone but the voters, that is. I would like to see Tallahassee explain why they are taking away funding from public schools for not taking the tests while doing absolutely nothing to private schools for not taking the same tests.
In Florida, the high-stakes tests give at the end of the year aren’t designed to help public education and the teaching profession; on the contrary, they are designed to harm them. Want proof, look at the hundreds of thousands of kids that Florida sends to private schools on the public dime. They don’t have to take any high stakes tests, their teachers don’t have VAM scores, their schools don’t lose money based on performance or the number of children who take them, and they damn sure are retained based on a test. Yet both are paid for by taxpayers. Testing in Florida is nothing but a scam.
Florida now spends billions on school vouchers. Those schools do not have to give the FSA or EOCs. In fact, they can teach what they want to who they want, and it is all funded by the taxpayers and friends its getting worse. Each year the program is expanded, diverting more and more money to schools that are so unregulated you might as well say they have none. Heck, most schools don’t even have to report how they CONTINUE READING: Education Matters: Testing in Florida is nothing but a scam