Under the bill, which was signed into law by Gov. Officials waived that requirement this spring because of the unusual school year.īut earlier this month, lawmakers approved legislation to help combat lagging learning gains during the COVID-19 pandemic. The state typically releases the third-grade English Language Arts scores before other test results as they help determine which children should remain in third grade. “So we have more students closer to Level Three, and we're trending in the positive direction there.” This year, the state was at 23 - we were at 21.” Hendrick said. “In 2019, the state average was 20 percent Level Ones, which is the lowest level of readers.
Officials also pay attention to the lower end of test scores. Florida school districts did not see large drops in outcomes on the third-grade reading test, despite concerns about a possible "COVID slide." While any decline in reading scores is typically lamented by school officials, the greater Tampa Bay region performed better than many other districts, some of which saw declines in their passing rate of up to 20 percent.įlorida Department of Education The passing score for the assessment is the minimum scale score in Performance Level Three. Pasco and Sarasota saw a decline of four percent, Manatee two percent, Hillsborough one percent, and Hernando was unchanged.
Other counties in the area also saw passing rate declines better than or equal to the state average. “Part of it was because of the instruction that our teachers gave and making sure we didn't have gaps, even when we had students at home in quarantine using technology so they could be in the class.” “Part of that is because more students returned to school in a more timely manner,” Hendrick said. “You don't normally see that much of a drop.”īut in Pinellas County, the passing rate only dropped by two percent.įor the first time in almost a decade, the county is even with the state in terms of third-grade students who received passing scores. “The state decreased four percentage points, which is a fairly large drop,” Hendrick said. In 2019, the last time the state tested, about 58 percent of third-graders passed. For all of the tests, Level Three indicates a satisfactory, passing performance.Īpproximately 54 percent of Florida’s third-graders passed the English Language Arts exam with scores at or above the Level Three designation.
The assessments are divided into five grading levels, Level One being the lowest, and Level Five the highest. “We didn't see that learning loss to the extent that it could have been there,” said Kevin Hendrick, associate superintendent of teaching and learning services for Pinellas County Schools. Local school leaders predicted the educational challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic would result in large learning losses.īut the first round of Florida’s spring testing results released this week told a different story. The results provide information to parents, teachers, policy makers, and the general public about how well students are learning. Every year, students in grades three through 10 take Florida Standards Assessments tests.
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