By Steve Gunn
EAGnews.org

TALAHASSEE, Fla. – Two top Florida officials believe the state should reconsider using new tests being developed by a national consortium to measure student progress under the new national Common Core math and English standards.

State Senate President Don Gaetz and House Speaker Will Weatherford want Florida to develop its own program for testing students under the Common Core standards, rather than relying on the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, the consortium that’s developing the Common Core exams, according to TampaBay.com.

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Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett acknowledged that the lawmakers had several legitimate concerns “that deserve serious consideration,” the news site said.

They include the 20 school days of testing that would be involved, which is more than it takes for students to do their current state assessment exams; the fact that the PARCC tests will be performed on computers, and the district doesn’t have enough to meet the demand; the unknown cost of using the new tests; and the lack of security policies to protect student test data.

“We cannot jeopardize fifteen years of education accountability reform by relying on PARCC to define a fundamental component of our accountability system,” the two leaders wrote in a letter to Bennett this week. “Our schools, teachers and families have worked too hard for too long for our system to collapse under the weight of an assessment system that is not yet developed, designed or tested.”

Florida is expected to have Common Core standards in place by 2014, and officials planned to start using the PARCC tests a year later.

This is further proof that the 45 states that rushed to approve Common Core several years ago, based largely on huge financial incentives from the federal government, acted too fast.

Many state officials are just starting to understand the full implications of the program and are having second thoughts.

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A program this massive and involved should have been given more deliberate consideration, with full public participation, before final decisions were made.

But it’s never too late to avoid a huge mistake. We applaud state officials, like Gaetz and Weatherford,  who are insisting on taking a long second look at Common Core and everything surrounding it, even at this late date.