Polk Wants to Look at 5th-Grade FCAT

LAKELAND | Polk school officials are not accepting the state's explanation that a drop in fifth-grade FCAT reading scores around Florida was only a blip and not a bigger flaw.

The state said an independent consultant looked into the scores and did not find a problem. But officials in Polk and other school districts are urging another examination of the fifth-grade scores, which declined while all other grades improved.

"I would recommend them looking into it even more," said Wilma Ferrer, Polk's senior director of assessment, accountability and evaluation. But she added, "I'm not finding anything here that sticks out as weird."

Pinellas and Hillsborough school officials have also asked the state to check again, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

The percentage of fifth-graders reading at grade level in Polk County had improved every year, from 50 percent in 2002 to a high of 65 percent in 2007. This year, 61 percent of Polk fifth-graders were reading at grade level, according to the FCAT scores.

The FCAT is scored on a range of 100 to 500, and in Polk fifth-grade reading scores slipped by five points, from 300 to 295.

Some Polk elementary schools had big drops. Alta Vista Elementary in Haines City saw a 24-point decline, Bethune Academy in Haines City dropped 21 points and Babson Park Elementary dropped 35 points.

Memories of the 2006 mistakes in third-grade reading scores are fresh in people's minds. That year, the number of third-graders reading at or above grade level jumped significantly in Polk County and statewide - to 71 percent in Polk.

However, when the 2007 numbers dropped, state officials acknowledged flaws in the 2006 test.

On Tuesday, when FCAT scores were released, Education Commissioner Eric J. Smith told reporters there wasn't a problem.

"This kind of fluctuation is within bounds, is relatively normal," he said.

After the controversy about the 2006 scores, the state education department hired the Buros Center at the University of Nebraska to review the 2006 test and every other FCAT used since 2001.

The St. Petersburg Times reported that the center looked at all of this year's tests, including the fifth-grade reading test, which consists entirely of multiple-choice questions, and found no problems.

The Times reported that some educators speculated that the flawed 2006 test may have led to this year's question mark. Some of the third-graders who took the 2006 test may have been promoted to fourth grade by mistake and later became part of this year's fifth-grade class.

In Polk, 80 percent of the fifth-graders who scored poorly this year are the same ones who did so well in 2006.

[ John Chambliss can be reached at john.chambliss@theledger.com or 863-802-7588. Material from the St. Petersburg Times was used in this article. ]