Orange County School Board reviews common final exams, progress monitoring and teacher-evaluation links

Orange County School Board members spent a work session on May 6 reviewing the district's use of progress monitoring activities and common final exams and how those assessments feed into teacher evaluations.

District staff told the board the PMAs are “focused on instruction and aligned to standards” and “should not be used for grading purposes,” while CFEs are summative end-of-course exams administered districtwide to provide consistent final-exam data and to supply student-learning-growth data for teacher evaluations.

Board members asked whether CFEs add too much testing time and whether the district could rely instead on state assessments such as FAST. Superintendent Dr. Vasquez said the district could stop CFEs and use state assessments, but noted that the current approach was adopted in response to teacher feedback. Member Gallo said, “I'm not a fan of high stakes testing and the fact that we are doing high stakes testing on students really for the sole reason of evaluating our teacher is disappointing to me.”

Why it matters: Florida statutes require a portion of instructional personnel evaluations to be based on data and indicators of student performance. The district uses CFEs for courses without statewide or national assessments so that one-third of a teacher's evaluation (the student-learning-growth component) can be calculated for those teachers. Staff told the board that for the 2022–23 school year, more than 4,700 teachers received at least part of their student-learning-growth rating from a CFE.

Details and context: Staff traced the local system to statutory changes after the 2011 Student Success Act and subsequent state rule changes. They explained that while the state lifted the requirement for course-specific district assessments in 2015, districts remain obligated to measure student learning growth for all grades and subjects and to include growth measures in personnel evaluations under section 1012.34 and related provisions. The district runs roughly 970 CFEs covering about 1,140 course offerings across semester administrations; PMAs are administered three times per year in target subjects and are designed to inform instruction rather than assign grades.

Staff described the assessment development process: OCPS teachers are nominated and paid stipends to serve as item writers and reviewers in summer sessions; items go through multiple district review rounds to check standard alignment, bias and sensitivity, and statistical quality. Staff said the district conducted a survey in February 2024 of teachers who taught at least one CFE course: 1,333 of 4,707 invited teachers responded (38% response rate); 59% favored continuing CFEs and 24% favored replacing them with reapplication of state or national assessment scores for evaluation purposes.

Costs and alternatives: Staff compared vendor costs and in-house development costs. They said vendor-provided algebra 1 and geometry assessments cost about $270,000 (FY23) and $209,000 (FY24). The district's most recent in-house summer writing for CFEs and PMAs cost about $275,000. Presenters said most of the in-house cost goes to teacher stipends.

Board direction and next steps: Members expressed a desire to reduce testing time and school-day disruption. The board asked staff to renew outreach to the Classroom Teachers Association and to survey current teacher sentiment about CFEs versus using existing state assessments for evaluation. Superintendent Vasquez and assessment staff said they had already begun outreach and would return with updated teacher feedback and options for replacing CFEs if the board directs.

Ending note: Staff emphasized that decisions about whether to maintain, alter or discontinue CFEs involve trade-offs among data quality, instructional time, teacher evaluation requirements under state law, and teacher preferences; the board asked for more analysis and further consultation with teachers and the union.