New Federal Guidelines

New Federal Guidelines

Reacting to Federal guidelines, the State of Florida, which has
been highlighted as a role model for student testing by the Bush
Administration's Dept. of Education, has redesigned and just released a new
comprehensive test to be given to all students beginning in the spring of
the 2006-2007 school year.

In response to President Bush's Federal No Child Left Behind Act,
students will have to pass it to be promoted to the next grade level. In
the hopes that it will be uniformly adopted by all the states, it will
be called the Federal Arithmetic and Reading Test or (FART). All
students who cannot pass a FART in the second grade will be retested in
grades 3, 4, and 5 until such a time as they are capable of achieving a
FART score of 80%. If a student does not successfully FART by grade 5,
that student shall be placed in a separate English program, the Special
Mastery Elective for Learning Language (SMELL). If with this increased
SMELL program the student cannot pass the required FART test, he or she
can graduate to middle school by taking a one-semester course in
Comprehensive Reading and Arithmetic Preparation (CRAP). If by age fourteen,
the student cannot FART, SMELL, or CRAP, he will earn his promotion in
an intensive one-week seminar. This is the Preparatory Reading for
Unprepared Nationally Exempted Students (PRUNES). It is the opinion of the
Florida Department of Public Instruction (DPI) that an intensive week
of PRUNES will enable any student to FART, SMELL, or CRAP. This revised
provision of the student-testing component of House Bill 110 should
help clear the air. This is part of the: "No School Left Standing Act".