Academic achievement of standardized assessment in English language and arts

Abstract

The Florida Standards Assessments (FSA) has been used in Florida to test school children’s proficiency in English Language and Arts (ELA), starting from the third grade. As the first group taking the test, the third graders were examined on their achievement in ELA on the FSA test from 2015 to 2018. Also, this study explores the probability of the results in 2015 to predict ELA achievement in 2018. Using an SPSS based analysis on the publicly available FSA results dataset, the two-factor split-plot ANOVA indicated a variation between students’ annual achievement, with no indication of variation in different areas in Florida. A simple linear regression suggests that the achievement in 2015 can significantly predict the output of similar assessments in 2018, F (1, 65) = 197.867, p < .001. Approximately 75 percent of the variation in the 2018 FSA ELA results was predicted by the 2015 results. This study, however, did not closely analyze skill domains (listening, speaking, reading, writing), and thus, future studies should look at these areas to recognize patterns, predictors, and long-term effects of FSA in assessing students’ ELA achievement.