• State law (FS 1003.4156 and FS 1003.4282) clearly indicates that each student’s performance on state EOC’s in Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, Biology I, US History, and Civics shall constitute thirty percent (30%) of the student’s final course grade.
• This was confirmed today, 4/29, by the Commissioner of Education on a Superintendent’s conference call.
• Therefore, District Administration intends to comply with the law

District Developed EOC’s for Courses Not Assessed by a Statewide Standardized Assessment

• During the conference call today with Commissioner Pam Stewart, she confirmed that Districts are still responsible for assessing student progress in all grades and subjects taught in the district.
• FS 1008.22(6) still states that measurement of student performance on state standards is the responsibility of school districts, except for those courses assessed by statewide, standardized assessments.
• While the requirement for the District to create districtwide end-of-course assessments for all courses was eliminated, all standards taught in all courses must still be assessed.
• Further, at least 1/3 of the educator evaluation for teachers and school based administrators must still be based on student performance.
• The District determined that the most equitable way to measure student growth for all teachers is to provide a consistent district created assessment for all courses not assessed by a statewide standardized assessment.
• This ensures that the District maintains local control where possible.
• This ensures that the student growth portion of evaluation is based on student performance data from assessments which actually measure the course content taught by the teacher, rather than being based on data from other statewide assessments that are not directly related to the course being taught.
• This also ensures that a single District assessment for each course is taken by all students in the course across the District to provide a consistent and equitable student growth score for all teaches of that identical course that can be used as part of the final evaluation.
• Since performance pay is based on the final teacher evaluation rating, it is critical to have a common district assessment for each course to ensure equity in the student growth evaluation metric for all teachers
• Finally, as the District seeks to make decisions that are best for our students, it is important to use common assessments for courses across the District to ensure that all students are equitably assessed on the standards taught in the course, regardless of the school or classroom.
• Based on what we know at this point, the District intends to continue administering district developed assessments for those courses not assessed by statewide, standardized assessments for two reasons:
• To assess student mastery of the standards for the course
• To ensure equitable and meaningful student performance data is available for use as part of the final evaluation for teachers of these courses