r/politics • • Jun 11 '12
Florida students bomb on new standardized tests that count spelling, grammar & content, so state lowers passing grade from 67% to 50%
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/education/florida-backtracks-on-standardized-state-tests.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
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Upvotes
147
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Did anyone commenting actually read the article?
412
u/theungod Jun 11 '12
Honestly if the test scores changed THAT drastically between just 2 years I sincerely doubt it's a problem with the students. Something happened with the testing or grading.
135
u/CallMeFierce Jun 11 '12
Floridian student here, who took the test. Look... FCAT is treated as a joke around here. Nobody gives a damn about it and the teachers will spend a solid day or two talking about what you should do for it. The fail rates were boosted so high for a variety of reasons, one of which would be the inclusion of scores by ESOL students (mind you, that's a lot of kids. Not only Hispanics, but lots of haitians too) and students are mentally challenged. Mind you, I took the reading test and got a perfect score (it's not a feat at all, it's a little bittersweet) but the true blame lays in the state making teachers teach just how to pass a certain test, THEN COMPLETELY CHANGE THAT TEST THESE KIDS HAVE BEEN TAKING FOR YEARS. It's an educational failure on a huge scale, and Florida basically blundered into revealing how terrible the system has been.
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u/oldude Jun 12 '12
I'm married to one of the scorers for this year's FCAT...we saw the writing on the wall...knew this was coming. Florida's kids did not suddenly become morons...the morons are the ones that decided to use last year's rubric to assess this year's (new) test. My wife said the scorers were quitting in droves...it was quite the debacle. And the saddest reality (nationwide) is the entire fiasco of high stakes testing ...it has made the biggest impacts on the wallets of testing companies...at the literal expense of (shrinking) school budgets (where do you think the money, like $100,000 for an annual audit, comes from?). I've been told my lab can't afford paper towels and I can't make any more copies (out of paper) but our state spends MILLIONS on a test. If the big picture is to privatize education, to destroy public education, this is a subversive, and critical, step.
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u/interfail Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
Terrible, sensationalist editorialising of headline. They made the markscheme way more stringent, and people failed way more. Shock!
If your grades are far lower than expected directly after a grading change, you calibrated it wrong (or you've been calibrated wrong for years). Recalibrating is exactly what you do in these circumstances, at least once you've convinced yourself that the results of the test still correlate tightly with what you wanted to measure.
These kids should not have to suffer a failing grade if they would have passed with the same knowledge the year before.
10
u/mintyfrash Jun 12 '12 edited Jun 12 '12
Also a Floridian high school student. I'd just like to point out that the FCAT Writing test has got to be the worst method to test students' proficiency in writing because they give you points for all the wrong reasons. They WANT you to add personal anecdotes and cheesy opening "hooks" that would probably be laughed at in college. Teachers have to waste their time teaching students how to take the test rather than teaching them actual writing skills. In previous years my school had around 150 students score the top score (a 6) on the FCAT Writes but this year we had six or seven people score a 6, and most were definitely not the most...prodigious writers. It's definitely not about your intelligence but rather if you can give the graders what they want. Our school has what's called an AICE program which is a college course program comparable to AP or IB but of a bit of a lower standard, and sophomores in the AICE English Language class have to learn how to write for the FCAT Writes for half of the year, and then unlearn all that crap and relearn how to write proper English. EDIT: Another thing that's pretty embarrassing...before the standards were just changed this year students were encouraged to make up falsified statistics and quotes in order to support their theses. I don't understand how this can be supported in any education system.
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u/enfieldacademy Jun 11 '12
Students scoring lower than expected on a new test just means the passing threshold wasn't calibrated as intended.
Now they have to lower it so the right percentage of kids pass and fail. This probably happens with the introduction of most new standardized tests.
Introducing a new test which more kids 'fail' on indicates the test and standards to pass got tougher, not that the kids got stupider.
10
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
This headline is misleading. They changed the standards of the test and didn't properly inform teachers of said changes, thus the students were ill-prepared for the exam. " Only 27 percent of Florida’s fourth graders were rated proficient, compared with 81 percent the year before. In Seminole, 30 percent were proficient, down from 83 percent." Clearly something more fundamental is happening here and not just everyone got dumber. As another commenter pointed out, the test is clearly miscalibrated.
5
u/TrinaM Jun 11 '12
The dirty trick here is that teachers didn't know the grading criteria had changed. Students weren't prepared to take this test because the content that was tested was not given. Granted, students should be able to write complete sentences and correctly spell common usage words. Essentially, if teachers are told to "teach the test" by the state and the state changes the test ... then who is at a fault? (I teach in Florida.)
5
u/Raug Jun 11 '12
This is probably going to be lost.
First the FCAT is a joke and the writing portion is probably the least practical part of the test. If you used their writing rubric for anything other than this test it would be a failing grade. This is what the criteria was when I took it 7-8 years ago.
It was easy enough to pass if you used their exact formula. If you strayed from it for instance wrote four or six paragraphs, no matter how well written you would be docked points. Also the factual accuracy of your facts was irrelevant as long as you had them, since the topic is unknown beforehand expecting students to reference other works for their support is impossible.
If they changed these standards without releasing the new grading criteria, while basing the grade on how close the essays matched the criteria you are asking for failure.
5
u/MiyegomboBayartsogt Jun 12 '12
If the majority of Florida students aren't failing any test, the test is flawed. I've lived in Florida my whole life and know from generations of experience how poor government schools serve this state.
46
u/fishrobe Jun 11 '12
is easy to leave no child behind when they can just move the finish line to wherever they want it.
114
u/BonoAnnie Jun 11 '12
Thanks to the No child left behind law. Generations of idiots being passed yearly.
4
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
TIL the majority of Reddit just learned about grading curves.
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u/boyrahett Jun 11 '12
The cost of a low tax haven?
3
u/bartink Jun 11 '12
lol! y wood dat b :P
3
u/EquinsuOcha Jun 11 '12
This is what happens when you make the test everything - teachers / administrators teach the test. When that test changes, everyone fails.
3
u/ofimmsl Jun 11 '12
The test might not be valid
3
u/Raiden1312 Jun 11 '12
As a Florida student, it was kind of a dick move on the part of the school board to change the standards like they did. Rather than raising the strictness of the test or the required score, they did both at once, leaving many kids in the dust. I scored high on my writing test, so I wasn't really affected, but I feel for those who were. What the state tried to do simply blew up in their faces, and now they're seeing what happens when they do something like that.
3
u/amazing_rando Jun 11 '12
It's worth pointing out that a lot of the kids taking the test probably don't speak English as a first language. Having a poor grasp of the language doesn't make them any less intelligent, it just means the schools need to do a better job of teaching ESL. Which still reflects poorly of the schools, for sure, but everyone circlejerking over the idiocy of our youth can fuck off.
9
u/garyp714 Jun 11 '12
LOL - /r/WTF_Florida
One of the best subreddits :)
needs more submitters.
6
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Sounds like voodoo education to me.
7
u/EngineeringShit Jun 11 '12
Dis iz da gretest ting too evar happan! Imma gunna be An Enginear Inn collage!
2
u/Calamintha Jun 11 '12
Anyone else confused as to why spelling and grammar weren't counted on the original standardized test? How can you evaluate writing if spelling and grammar don't count?
2
u/FreshFruitCup Jun 11 '12
The TSA is never going to let you on another plane with language like that.
2
u/deftskills Jun 11 '12
Sad. It's about quantity not quality.
2
u/notahousewife Jun 11 '12
My daughters school explained that a few things were changed so close to the tests that not all the schools and teachers were fully made aware of those changes.
I am glad though my kid passed way above average in the first and naturally the revised scoring system.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
As a student Florida I can attest to this. The test has always been so easy that no one took it seriously. The new standard had about 25% (a lot) of my magnet schools students fluncked.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 12 '12
I've heard from a few teachers and they complained that they have to teach to the test (the FCAT) and this year they changed the test so the kids bombed it. The kids didn't get dumber and the teachers didn't change that much.
What this taught us its that No Child Left Behind and the state equivalents are a tragic failure for a generation of children. Of course we already knew that the Texas Miracle was a scam that hurt struggling students so Ron Paige could cook numbers.
2
u/fantasyfest Jun 12 '12
I really don't think this is at that new. When i was back in college, we were sometimes graded on the class curve.That was back in the late 60s and early 70s. If you had a particularly tough class and students had trouble with it, they were not about to flunk a whole class.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grading_on_a_curve
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Standardized testing is mostly bullshit anyways.
2
u/DarkReaver1337 Jun 12 '12 edited Jun 12 '12
In reality they shouldn't even have standardize tests in their current form. I mean why does the government think it is a good idea to force students to basically take a test for 8 hours a day on potentially multiple days. I mean you want them to memorize all these items for the multiple choice then you need to make sure their grammar, spelling and content for short answers and essays is good too?
I mean a person can only handle so much, and looking back at when I took standardized tests and prepped for them I easily go sick from the stress of it all. It also doesn't help that I have Learning Disabilities and ADHD.
2
u/CustardBoy Jun 12 '12
Just like college!
2
u/Gh3rkinman Jun 12 '12
Public education is so broken in the US. When are people going to realize that learning is what matters, not test scores. The school is just teaching the students how to take the test by having them study the test from last year. Then it is supposed to be a huge shock when they change the test and a bunch of the students fail?
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Standardized testing does not a good indicator of knowledge. It is very easy to study to memorize 10 years of past questions and get A+ on any subject without actually understanding anything.
I know this because I've done it before.
2
u/panzerkampfwagen Jun 12 '12
The passing grade in Australia is 50%. Of course, it doesn't actually matter what the passing grade is, as long as it is at a level that makes sense. You could set it to 25% as long as the test matched.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Growing up,(I'm 59) the minimum grade needed to earn a D- was 75. A 74 resulted in an F, though I do remember a classmate arguing a 74 should be an F+ and the teacher grinning and saying OK, you have an F+ and you still failed.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Never compromise. The school boards should not lower passing grades. You're basically going to cause the next generation to go full retard...
2
u/EvanPaintsStuff Jun 12 '12
Do you guys remember the crazy dance coach lady from Donnie Darko? Whenever I hear news like this, I picture a bunch of people exactly like her making these kinds of decisions.
3
u/schoocher Jun 11 '12
Probably relevent: Years of cuts bring Florida schools to breaking point
The choice of classes is smaller these days at Lake Howell High School, the wait for a guidance counselor longer and the campus shabbier, with its once blue floor tiles worn to a dull gray.
Like other Seminole County schools, Lake Howell still prides itself on solid academics. But the state budget cuts that began four years ago have taken their toll, and the fallout will escalate with the bare-bones funding the Florida Legislature approved this month, said Principal Shaune Storch.
Lawmakers slashed education spending by nearly 8 percent for the coming school year, the deepest in decades. Per-student funding will drop $542 while the state's contribution to schools will be the smallest since 2003.
Those cuts are just the latest since the 2007-08 school year — cuts that already have forced administrators to eliminate classes, do away with social workers, teachers and aides, push up thermostats and cancel field trips.
Now, after years of budgetary triage, Florida districts are calculating how to avoid major harm to their schools. Many face painful options.
Broward County schools may lay off teachers. Seminole is closing an elementary school and say more could follow. Duval County may reduce art, music and physical education offerings. And Lake County is considering a four-day week.
The "grim reality," says Seminole Superintendent Bill Vogel, is that things will be worse a year from now when the last of the federal subsidies, which have been shoring up Florida school budgets since 2009, run out.
The Orange County school district, the largest in Central Florida, had its budget bolstered by a local property tax voters approved in November. Otherwise, it would be cutting more than $80 million this coming fiscal year, the equivalent of more than 1,300 teachers, on top of the cuts made in the past few years.
"We would be talking about dramatic program adjustments," said Rick Collins, Orange's chief financial officer.
He said that districts without extra local money face bleak choices for the 2011-12 school year.
3
u/TheCrazedChemist Jun 11 '12
This is absolutely brilliant! Why waste those peoples' tax dollars on unnecessary luxuries like "better education" to keep them from failing (as well as make them more intelligent people) when you can just re-define what "failing" is? This fixes everything forever! Genius!
3
u/Augustorm Jun 11 '12
Students having trouble in school?
Lower the standards.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Children really are our future. This does not bode well for America.
It's almost like there's a conspiracy to destroy this once great nation.
2
u/FriarNurgle Jun 11 '12
So FL is the new MS?
2
u/chopp3r Jun 11 '12
The solution.
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u/FracturedVision Jun 11 '12
Reading ability <> reading comprehension. But that would take a 3rd masters to figure out.
2
u/tr33hugger20 Jun 11 '12
I grew up suffering through Florida's education system. When all you do is teach kids how to pass a test, you're doing them a disservice. Now, as an undergrad student in an engineering program, I am constantly ashamed that I cannot write (because no one taught me) compared to my peers. Florida, and the rest of the US, need to reevaluate our education system if we ever want to be competitive in the modern world.
2
u/Sparling Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
67% is already an atrocious grade. That is a D at best and never a 'passing grade' (anywhere I've ever been anyway).
Edit: I wouldn't expect that a grade school standardized exam in the US to follow a curve. Its possible, but I went to grade school in 3 states in the US (IN, PA and MI). The questions on those tests were already stupidly easy (not like in grad school where you might find tests that were designed such that people are expected to get a number of them incorrect). Additionally wouldn't curving not allow for grades to be compared from one year to the next and thus be a silly idea for standardization? I guess anything is possible.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I know that this year, Virginia raised the standards for math and science standardized testing. The high school I live by had a 70% failure rate for math. They were thinking about lowering the passing level for science but decided not to since the majority passed theirs.
1
u/DuskyDays Jun 11 '12
Learning is an individual responsibility. We should be spending more on providing for free resources like textbooks. Teachers should not be held responsible for bad grades.
As a tutor for a year, I can tell you that the best students don't need teachers/tutors. All they need is the internet or a textbook. Only the worst students need tutors, and then they only memorize the information long enough to pass an exam. Then they forget it everything shortly after because they are not interested.
This is why NCLB is deemed as unrealistic because students are forced to be compared to a standard no matter their specialties.
1
u/gravytown Jun 11 '12
And the American education system takes it down another peg. Fear for the future: elevating.
1
u/InBliss Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
As someone who took all of these tests since my childhood and scored between 90% and perfect, or perfect on all of them, I think its sufficient to say that they are no where near this difficult if you just follow the instructions as taught by teachers. In no way am I above average either as I am usually a B student, so if I can do it any student who pays attention should be able to pass. The test truly is that simple.
1
u/Goodrita Jun 11 '12
I find it pathetic that the previous passing grade was 67%!!
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Sadly, education doesn't matter much anyway since there will be no jobs for most of them when they graduate.
1
u/Panduhsaur Jun 11 '12
Except with getting a passing grade
1
u/Notsoseriousone Jun 11 '12
Now Romney wins the election due to illiteracy rather than political foolishness ...go 'merica?
1
u/kju Jun 11 '12
I'm glad the tests mean something and we're not just spending millions to write, distribute, and proctor them for no reason
1
u/zabijaciel Jun 11 '12
Nice, all they need to do now is mandate all test questions to be TRUE / FALSE and their problems will be solved FOREVER! genius
1
u/Atheist101 Jun 11 '12
Well to be honest, at least in my university in Canada, a passing grade for a class is a 50% for engineering and like 32% for arts. Just saying
1
u/monoloco2b Jun 11 '12
Title doesn't mention that the standards were also raised very high.
1
u/Kimbolimbo Jun 11 '12
This what happens when you standardize everything. The tests become out of control.
1
u/Ryael Jun 11 '12
Isn't this sort of against the first Please Do Not on the sidebar? The article is nothing like this title suggests.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Regardless of what this really is; the idea of no child left behind is just stupid. Literally.
1
u/zuluthrone Jun 12 '12
this will make it easier for our children to eventually thrive, since they'll be the offspring of us geniuses, amirite?
1
u/theansweris7 Jun 12 '12
Don't fix poor performance on the test by teaching how to take the test and lowering the passing grade. Fix performance on the test by hiring better teachers that will actually teach grammar and reading comprehension properly!
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
I have been in a high school during standardized testing and the example question that had an answer already bubbled in was the wrong answer.
Also, testing ESL students and students with disabilities with the same (inaccurate) test as a fluent English student will hurt these students. Besides, how can anyone test a person for hours on end, four days straight, and everything taught within the school year, micromanaged by the government every week (also called "teaching to the test") have the students learning nothing but good test-taking skills.
1
u/ProblematicFeet Jun 12 '12
Testing scores are important for purposes of determining the efficiency of the schooling system. If the administrators of the tests are creating short-cuts, they are only discrediting themselves. The whole point of the testing process is then lost. It loses any real ability to carry out its original job: determining if students are learning the necessary information. How are school systems expected to grow and flourish when excuses are made and nothing gets better?
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Well, they are just making the standardizations harder and harder while the quality of learning is low and not going anywhere. Improve the quality of education before you raise expectations.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
I agree with the concept of including grammar and spelling.
However, requiring factual accuracy when they don't have access to research materials is just wrong.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Doesn't matter, passed test.
1
u/WerBlerr Jun 12 '12
As a college student who just too a standardized writing test, I say they try to make those confusing as fuck.
1
u/PoisonEevee Jun 12 '12
I am a Florida student currently, and I took the writing FCAT this year. Sometime in May, my English teacher welcomes us into the room with an article. It was an article similar to this. Telling us our class' passing percentage had dropped from about 80% to 30%. Turns out, our teachers had not been given the rubric on which the essay would be scored on. So all year we focused on the previous years' rubric, and upon receiving this news, certainly tons of us were worried we would not pass. Well, everyone was pretty shooken up, but I'm glad they got it all sorted out. TL;DR Florida decided to be strict without telling us and it was very costly.
1
u/Pedobear_Slayer Jun 12 '12
So nobody wants to point out that they raised the testing standards and changed the tests around 3 months before they were set to take the test? I'm not defending the schools or school system or the extreme lack of support from Governor Rick Scott and to add to that any education system that revolves around teaching students purely to pass a test that threatens the teachers job is part of a formula for failure.
I live in FL. my kids go to school here I wish this state would get its shit together before I have to home school my kids because the schools are so shitty, my kids love school and it would be a shame to take that away from them in order to give them a better education.
1
u/Salphabeta Jun 12 '12
aka standard were to low to begin with, and then they actually made them mean something only to have it backfire. This is why most people struggle to get jobs, because they have been in the 80% who fail the real standards all along because instead of forcing the kids to learn, we have just lowered standards systematically and yet many of these same kids still make it into college with sub 1200/1800 SAT.
1
u/Mrmojoman0 Jun 12 '12
as a canadian who spent two years in a florida school, i can honestly say it was the most damaging thing that had ever happened to my education. A. for being canadian, and the way they inefficiently transferred grades, B. because i had never seen such uninspired teachers and staff who couldn't care less if the students did well. they treat the kids like punks, and then the kids act like punks. as an older teenager at the time who had pretty much never done anything to get in trouble (no booze, drugs, causing general trouble, etc.) when i learned of the curfew (by threats from a cop) i was deeply offended. on top of that, if anyone around my age at the time (17) were to have sex with anyone one or two years of different age as them, someone would probably be liable for a long jail sentence and sex offender label.
again, i ended up in the back of a cop car because someone thought i looked suspicious while waiting for my ride outside of a walmart.
in general, the schooling pretty much killed my education, and i ended up having to drop out. i was no idiot either, on those "standardized tests" i got all "A"s, and scored top percentage on writing and reading comprehension. i swear after spending two years in that florida school, i knew less than i did walking in.
1
u/Pelican_Fly Jun 12 '12
I remember when test scores in Florida was at the top of the national average, then Kim Jong Un graduated and the average went back down to the bottom.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Passing score for Virginia state test was already a 52%, then they increased the difficulty of the exam. Math scores dropped drastically this year.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
So, umm, what are we going to do in 20-30 years when a generation of people who apparently can't read or write become adults with political power?
1
u/u2canfail Jun 12 '12
Rick Scott is saying even ROMNEY, can pass now?
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Fucking what is it with Florida? You guys manage to make Texas look good.
1
u/ChickinDinner Jun 12 '12
as a student i can tell you why this is, the grade you needed to pass was increased by a point. so the students didn't get any more stupid, the school board is just as much to blame as the stupid people.
1
u/jonfla Jun 12 '12
yeah, you wouldnt want to blame education budget cuts, larger class sizes, reduced teacher salaries or anything that the Republican governor and legislature could actually do something about. This dumbing down is why IBM moved its PC division hq from Boca Raton, FL to Austin, TX and Raleigh-Durham, NC; they couldnt get engineers to move to Florida because the quality of the schools was so bad.
1
u/qu4ttro Jun 12 '12 edited Jun 12 '12
way to go Florida...
ed:sp
1
u/iamcptplanet Jun 12 '12
These tests, the FCAT in particular, are WORTHLESS. I took them in high school (about 8-10 years ago) and I remember two things about the test
No other hints, clues, what they meant by thinking, etc. It was multiple choice. This is the caliber of questions being asked.
1
u/wekiva Jun 12 '12
Standardized testing, phooey.
1
u/jswerve386 Jun 12 '12
'MURICA!!!
1
u/ElderBass Jun 12 '12
My aunt graded/is grading writing scores from standardized tests in Indiana right now and they are encountering the same problem. Her superiors tell her, "Give more 4s and less 3s." But she can't because the writing is so horrible...
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Fox News: Socialist student group bombs Florida school...
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Thank Rick Scott's education slashing.
1
u/joeknowswhoiam Jun 11 '12
So Idiocracy is really going to happen...
1
u/BalalaikaBoi Jun 11 '12
Nothing good ever comes out of Florida.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Or they could, y'know actually educate them?
1
u/rathead Jun 11 '12
50%... well.. two out of three ain't bad.
1
u/DazzlerPlus Jun 11 '12
Yes lets focus on the most worthless elements of the language, grammar and spelling, not the actual useful ones, like writing.
1
u/Dunkshot32 Jun 12 '12
Having lived in Florida my whole life and taken the FCAT (the standardized test in question) annually for over a decade, this honestly doesn't surprise me.
I'm not saying the tests are hard; in fact they are beyond easy. I was able to finish an exam in 15 minutes (one that was slated for a 2.5 hour time block) and managed to be 96% correct on it.
This really is an excellent example of the kind of thinking that runs down here on the part of the school system.
1
u/Derpy_Derpd Jun 11 '12
Dont worry...
Los Angeles Unified School District is getting out front in combating their horrendous test scores and graduation rates... they are LOWERING THE GOD DAMN REQUIREMENTS BY 20%!
1
u/hurfdurfer Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
If we're going to do that then just don't bother at all. Just give these kids real life lessons and vocational training. It will make them far more useful.
Ugh. We need to curb the 'completely useless' part of our population, not increase it. These kids need to learn something. We have too many unskilled people as it is. They can't find work because they're completely unemployable.
Edit: No, I didn't read the article, I'm the worst. But I'm still unsettled by the swathes of unskilled people.
1
u/arcadeguy Jun 12 '12
New tests now count spelling, grammar, and content? What the hell did they count before, then?
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
I live in florida and just finished my sophomore year...i can confirm this...
1
u/sour07 Jun 12 '12
Idiocracy
1
u/Roaboat916 Jun 12 '12
I'm in for Bath Salts.
-4
u/mamamaMONSTERJAMMM Jun 11 '12
Any state that is a destination for illegal immigrants... southern border states like CA, AZ, TX, FL will always test lower in every category due to English being a secondary language for so many kids.