Evaluation of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program Participation, Compliance and Test Scores in 2011-12

David N. Figlio (PDF):

This is the sixth in a series of reports evaluating the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC) Program, as required by the Florida Statutes, s. 1002.395(9)(j). This report provides information on private school compliance with program rules regarding required testing, describes the attributes of eligible students who participate in the program, and presents data on student test score levels and gains in the program (as well as school-level gain scores), the performance of participating students prior to their entry into the program, and the performance of participating students once they leave the program to return to the public sector.

During the 2011-12 academic year, David Figlio, the Project Director, collected test score data from private schools participating in the FTC Program in real time. This is the sixth year for which program participants' test score data were collected, and the fifth year in which this data collection occurred in real time.

Compliance with program testing requirements, 2011-12:

• Compliance with program testing requirements in 2011-12 was at its highest level to date, and private school reporting errors continue to be at very low levels. Private schools provided usable test scores for a record 96.4 percent of program participants in grades 3-10. Another 2.5 percent of participants were ineligible for testing or were not enrolled in the school at the time of testing; this is largely driven by the fact that some students arrived in schools after fall testing (for schools that test in the fall, principally those that administer the Iowa Test of Basic Skills) and some students who began the year in a school left the school prior to the more typical spring testing. The 0.9 percent rate of reported illness/absence remains at a very low level. Test administration compliance errors by participating schools have held steady for the last several years, with reporting problems involving only 0.3 percent of participants in 2011-12.
• A large majority, though lower than prior years (57.5 percent), of test-takers took the Stanford Achievement Test. Other popular tests were the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (22.5 percent) and the TerraNova (12.1 percent). Substantially larger numbers of schools administered Terra Nova in 2011-12 than in prior years.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at August 16, 2013 12:12 AM
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