A judge is siding with families who are fighting a state law that ties students' promotion to fourth grade on how they perform on standardized reading tests.
A Tallahassee judge ruled Friday that school districts must consider other options other than students' performances on the Florida Standards Assessment tests, including classroom grades and assessments from teachers who work with the students.
"She did decide they should be accepting a report card as a means for promotion," said mom Michelle Rhea, who is the only Orange County parent named in the lawsuit. "This is huge for these kids. Huge! And for teachers too, it validated their purpose in the classroom."
At the instruction of their parents like Rhea, students wrote their names on the tests and then didn't answer questions. The action was a protest of a law passed under Gov. Jeb Bush that made reading test scores a requirement to advance to fourth grade.
Rhea says to avoid the embarrassment of having her daughter take the third grade again, she withdrew her from Orange County Public Schools and enrolled her into a private school.
"I knew her sitting in a third-grade classroom was not going to be an option. I told her that wasn't something she needed to be worried about because we would fight for that which we did," Rhea said.
She was one of 14 parents who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit that represented six counties which included Orange, Seminole and Osceola.
Circuit Judge Karen Gievers chastised the state Department of Education and those counties for failing to promote students who had no reading deficiencies simply because they didn't pass the test.
But the counties are already appealing.
One of the co-founders of the Opt Out Movement in Florida, Cindy Hamilton says three students were turned away from school when they showed up with report cards and the judge's order in hand.
"This fight is far from over," Hamilton said. "We have kids across the state who are still in limbo, who went to school this morning with the order and they were told no. There shouldn't be any child denied education in this state. When our boards say they are in this for what's best for the children and what they need, they're not."
However, the Orange County School District's counsel told News 6 in a statement that this judge's ruling has far greater implications.
"OCPS out of respect for the judicial process does not comment on pending litigation. However, even though the Plaintiff’s temporary injunctive relief was denied, OCPS has already filed an appeal of the court’s decision contesting the authority of a Leon County court to rule on a matter involving the Orange County School Board. The impact of such a ruling has far greater implications than the substantive issues raised by the Plaintiff and impacts the existing due process afforded governmental entities to be able to defend their actions in their own home venues," said District General Counsel Diego “Woody” Rodriguez.