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A month delay in the release of FCAT scores and three audits later parents, students and school administrators still aren’t satisfied with the results. The Department of Education says the scores are accurate and final, but as Capital correspondent Whitney Ray tells us, a group of school administrators are still pushing for another review.

Carol Lambert has a son in high school, but his latest FCAT scores don’t reflect his academic history.

“He was way up here on the scores and now here,” said Carol Lambert.

Carol questions the accuracy of the scores, because they were released a month late, and the results show a statewide drop in learning gains.

Learning gains portion of the FCAT lets teachers know which students need more help and they also account for half of a schools overall letter grade. The results were audited three times, verifying their accuracy, but a handful of superintendants say there wasn’t enough time to do the audits correctly.

“Three week audit is not enough time. I hope that the commissioner will reconsider,” said Jackie Pons, Superintendent of Leon County Schools.

The Department of Education says the results are final, and individual school grades based on the results will be released Friday.

“We are not making progess as much as we used to be, so it’s important to note that we still are doing a great job here in Florida when it come to education,” said Tom Butler, the spokesman with the Department of Education.

Still, parents like Carol aren’t buying it.

“I think they should throw out this years FCAT scores. Just throw them out, because something had to have gone wrong,” said Carol.

School officials want to make Carol’s son take an extra hour of classes a day based on the results still in question. Individual school scores will be released tomorrow at noon and the Department of Education will hold a conference call to discuss the results.

Ending FCAT

The FCAT debacle has some state lawmakers calling for an end to the test. The high school FCAT will begin being phased out next year, but there’s no end in site for elementary and middle school students. Representative Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda is filing legislation to end the test immediately.

“The FCAT has been problematic from the beginning, and then when the grading problems came up I just decided we couldn’t trust the process. The other thing is we are in grave financial difficulty in this state. To spend 250 million dollars on test grading in this state and then not have any one of those people be in the state of Florida, there’s something wrong with that,” said Rehwinkel Vasilinda.

Rehwinkel Vasilinda is hoping her bill will be heard when the legislature comes back for special session tentatively scheduled for September. She says the 250 million dollars saved from grading the FCAT could be used to create jobs.