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Changing Florida’s Standardized Testing procedures will be one of the most talked about proposals at the end of 2015’s legislative session. As Matt Galka tells us, with the House already moving on their ideas and a testing debacle still fresh in the minds of many, the Florida Senate is now pushing their own reforms.

Seminole County teacher Sandra Maldonado-Ross was part of the pilot program for the new Florida Standards Assessment test.  She said it was easy to see problems coming.

“In my opinion it was horrible. I mean, like I said, the kids aren’t taught to write an essay with their computers. They’re taught to write them with pen and paper, pencil, draw on graphic organizers and that’s not what this test did,” she said.

A rollout that started with a thud is just part of laundry list of complaints lawmakers have heard about the new state standardized tests.

“We’re feeding them garbage with this Common Core curriculum,” Chris Quakenbush told a Senate committee. Quackenbush is part of a group called Stop Common Core Florida.

A day after the House passed a bill that would scale back some exams, the Senate had their crack at it.  The Senate proposal would put a 5 percent of school hours limit on testing.  It would also allow for schools to apply for a waiver of consequences if the they had too much trouble with the computer testing. Senator Don Gaetz said Florida wouldn’t back down from accountability.

“If there are people that came here hoping that we would take down the goal posts, and we simply wouldn’t keep score anymore in Florida, you wont’ be getting any support from this Senator,” said Sen. Gaetz (R-Niceville).

Technical glitches and an alleged cyber attack plagued the rollout of the Florida Standards Asessments, and that’s why the Senate bill is going to allow the state to collect damages from the vendor.

“Those monies would go back to the school district. The intent is there to offset any cost that was caused by the problems that occurred in the rollout,” said Sen. Legg (R-Lutz).

Another difference in the House and Senate bills: school start dates. The House would allow schools to start as early as August 10^th, something the Senate did not include.

Lawmakers acknowledged the differences in both bills and hope to iron them out. If they don’t, as Senator John Legg put it, then both sides would lose.