Guest Post: Florida Remakes Placement Test

Today’s guest post comes from John Hughes, associate vice chancellor for evaluation at the Division of Florida Colleges. John is here to tell us about Florida’s new placement mechanism, the Postsecondary Education Readiness Test.

The Florida College System (FCS) is comprised of 28 colleges with 887,000 students enrolled in 2009-10. More than half of the colleges offer baccalaureate programs, though upper division enrollments represent only about 1 percent of the total. This reflects the system’s historic and continuing mission to serve lower division or two-year students. As part of that mission, Florida has long had well-established readiness testing and placement policies. All students are required to take a common placement test for reading, writing, and math, and are required to enroll in developmental education if they do not meet the minimum cut scores. For years Florida used the Accuplacer as the primary placement tool.

In 2008, working with the assistance of Achieve’s American Diploma Project, Florida began working toward a common definition of college readiness that would include specific expectations of what students need to know and be able to do in order to succeed in their first college-level English and math classes. During the same time period, the state’s contract for the Accuplacer expired and had to be re-bid. The Division of Florida Colleges recognized the opportunity and released an invitation to negotiate (ITN) for a test that would reflect the definition of college readiness already under development.

The requirements and expectations for the new test were established by English and math faculty. Statute and rule require a test that covers three subjects – reading, writing, and math. Faculty determined the content by identifying the competencies necessary to succeed in college credit courses and also developing example questions. The competencies were then used to create a test blueprint that identifies how many questions each student will be asked for each competency. Faculty approved the blueprint as well as the alignment of each item to the competencies and the content of every test item. Thus, Florida college faculty guided and shaped the entire test development process.

In October 2010, the Florida Department of Education’s Division of Florida Colleges (division) and McCann Associates rolled out the Florida Postsecondary Education Readiness Test (PERT). The test went live with interim cut-scores designed to replicate the placement rates observed with the Accuplacer. Once students have been placed using the PERT and the state has received their course outcomes, the division and McCann will conduct a detailed analysis to determine if the cut-scores are appropriate or need to be revised.

With a new placement test now in use, Florida is moving ahead with the development of diagnostic tests. Once again faculty members were asked to identify the competencies for the tests. In this case the competencies focused on the skills necessary to move into college credit courses. The diagnostic exams will be given to students who place into either the upper or lower level developmental courses. Data from the exams can be used to guide instruction or even to direct students into a modularized curriculum that focuses on just those areas in which a student is deficient. The lower level diagnostic tests are schedule to go live in August, 2011.

In addition to its use for entering college students, in 2011-12 the PERT will be used to assess the readiness of all 11th grade students whose high school assessments indicate they are at risk of not being college ready. Those who do not meet the cut-scores will be given remediation in 12th grade. As many as 150,000 Florida 11th graders may be eligible for readiness testing.


John Hughes is associate vice chancellor for evaluation at the Division of Florida Colleges.