NICEVILLE, Fla. – Gov. Ron DeSantis announced plans last week to end the Florida Standards Assessments (FSA) testing for students across the state.
On Monday, DeSantis and Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran sat down with educators in Niceville to talk about how his plan to ditch the FSA in favor of “progress monitoring” will affect them moving forward.
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“We believe a system of progress monitoring where you have more streamlined periodic assessments would be much more student, parent and teacher friendly,” DeSantis said during the roundtable event. “Also what we’re proposing to do is going to reduce the amount of time dedicated to assessments by 75%. So we really believe that having more time for learning is going to be beneficial for our students and the parents and I think obviously the teachers. They want to teach and not be test preparation proctors.”
The announcement was applauded by the state’s largest teachers union and supported by a Niceville teacher on Monday.
“With progress monitoring, it’s going to give us the opportunity to meet our students where they are and not expect them to just come in with certain standards,” said Jessica Landry Okaloosa County’s Teacher of the Year.
DeSantis said he plans to ask the Legislature to drop the current annual standardized testing in public schools and move to the new system during the next session.
If implemented, the 2021-2022 school year will be the last year for the FSA and Florida will become the first state in the nation to fully implement progress monitoring instead of end-of-year standardized testing as well as fully eliminate common core.
