During a press conference Tuesday at the Doral Academy Preparatory School, DeSantis publicly announced his plan to make this year the last year of Florida Standardized Assessments (FSAs). DeSantis called these standardized assessments “outdated” during a Miami-Dade press conference. 

He said that he will be asking the Legislature to replace FSAs with progress monitoring assessments, taken three times a school year. These assessments would take hours, not days, to administer, saving time and energy from students and schools alike. 

According to the Florida Department of Education, FSAs “serve Florida students by measuring education gains and progress.” However, during the same press conference at Doral, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran called the FSA “inadequate,” backing DeSantis’s plan for improvement. 

Image Courtesy of the Florida Department of Education website. 

DeSantis’s announcement comes as the first step of his plan to implement his new “Florida Assessment of Student Thinking Plan.” With this plan, he says that Florida is set to become America’s first state to fully eliminate common core and move towards progress monitoring. 

But, what are these progress monitoring assessments? Well, DeSantis that these will entail three short tests during the Fall, Winter, and Spring,, reducing testing time by 75% according to the Governor’s Office. 

This plan was met with strong support from Florida’s largest faculty union and even Agricultural Commissioner Nikki Fried.

A big announcement JUST was made re: high-stakes testing. The gov announced the intent to drop high-stakes FSA testing in the 2022-23 school year. It will free up time for genuine teaching and learning, a move that the FEA, local unions & our 150,000 members have long advocated. pic.twitter.com/nzdI2sJtdR

— Florida Education Association (@FloridaEA) September 14, 2021

It’s about time. Good for teachers, students, and parents. https://t.co/rFlZ7TQEpq

— Nikki Fried (@NikkiFried) September 14, 2021

On the other side of the aisle, Duval County Public Schools sent a statement to News4Jax about the proposed changes.

“Today, we remain 100% focused on the academic achievement of our students. We have multiple methods for analyzing student growth within Florida’s learning standards including the type of progress monitoring assessments proposed by the governor,” the statement said. “We will continue our focus on student success within Florida’s standards while we listen for guidance from the legislature and the Department of Education on our state’s future accountability system”

Standardized testing appears to be on its way to getting purged from Florida schools. Spinnaker will continue to follow this story and gauge student’s responses to this news. 

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