Authorize Submission of Florida Department of Education Clearinghouse Grant and the Commencement of Test Development Activities in Support of the STAR Program.

The STAR program is designed to reward the top 25% of the teachers and instructional personnel in each of the subject areas. It is based on the amount of change students make on a pretest and posttest. The amount of growth is calculated and teachers are rewarded based on whether the class average for a course taught by that teacher was in the top 25%. The program is possible because most core courses have a semester exam. The problem occurs most often in courses that do not have a pretest or a posttest. In order to address this issue the Florida Department of Education and the Hillsborough County Public Schools plan to enter into an agreement for a statewide clearinghouse. All of the district’s exams will be part of the clearinghouse as well as assessments from the Florida Virtual School and other school districts. The Department of Education Clearinghouse Grant will support four staff members, equipment and $400,000 per year. Any additional exams needed by the district will be developed by teachers.

The work will commence immediately and will be followed by technical service agreements being presented on January 16, 2007. Due to the short timeline for pretest development, some of these technical service agreements will be presented retroactively.

Goal 5 – The district will eliminate the FCAT achievement gap by a minimum of 10 percentage points are reported by No Child Left Behind. Critical success Factor 5.a (Recruit and retain high-performing teachers).

The grant will support four staff members plus a budget of $400,000. These dollars will be used for test development, which will directly reduce the developmental cost to the district. A copy of the Florida Department of Education’s letter to Superintendent Elia is attached as well as the list of pretests and posttests for courses in the vocational area. Other areas will also need to have exams developed. The cost for the first phase of pretest development will be approximately $22,000.

The completion of the items put into a test form constitutes the evaluation. The pretest should be completed by January 2007 and the posttest completed in June 2007.