Annual Assessment Requirement
Florida Statutes require a private school participating in either prong of the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, or an individual student participating in the Personalized Education Program (PEP), to demonstrate academic accountability by annually administering or making provisions for students participating in a scholarship program to take one of the nationally norm-referenced tests identified by the Department of Education.
Alternatively, private schools may apply to administer Florida’s statewide, standardized assessments pursuant to section 1008.22, Florida Statutes, in order to fulfill this requirement. If the parents of students participating in PEP would like their child to participate in a statewide, standardized assessment to fulfill this requirement, they may arrange with their school district to have their student test at a district location. (Note: private school/PEP students are only able to participate in end-of year assessments in grades 3–10 and end-of-course [EOC] assessments; they are not able to participate in PM1 and PM2 of the FAST progress monitoring assessments or in any kindergarten through grade 2 assessments).
Students with disabilities for whom standardized testing is not appropriate are exempt from this requirement.
Norm-Referenced Assessment
Below is the list of approved norm-referenced assessments and, if possible, a link to the test publisher’s website. To determine test mode, available accommodations, and how to administer one of the tests below, please contact the respective testing company directly.
- ACT
- Classic Learning Test (CLT3-8, CLT10, CLT)
- Comprehensive Testing Program (CTP) – School-based testing only
- Curriculum Associates – i-Ready Assessments
- Educational Development Series (EDSERIES), Forms J and K
- Edmentum Exact Path
- Iowa Assessments-Core Battery, Forms E, F, and G
- Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS)-Core Battery, Forms A, B, and C
- Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS)-Complete Battery, Form C
- Iowa Tests of Educational Development® (ITED®), Form C
- IXL Real-Time Diagnostic
- Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement Third Edition, Comprehensive Form (KTEA-III)
- NWEA Measures of Academic Progress (MAP)
- Pivot INSPECT Summative Assessment
- PreACT Secure
- PSAT 8/9
- PSAT 10
- PSAT/NMSQT
- SAT
- Secondary School Admission Test (SSAT)
- Stanford Achievement Test, Tenth Edition (SAT10)
- Renaissance Star Assessments (Early Literacy, Reading, Math)
- TerraNova, Third Edition (TerraNova 3)
- TerraNova NEXT
- Thrive Academics Performance Series (Developed by Scantron Corp)
- Wide Range Achievement Test, Fourth Edition (WRAT4) and Fifth Edition (WRAT5)
Statewide Assessments
Private schools with enrolled students receiving one of the applicable scholarships that wish to administer Florida’s statewide, standardized assessments to fulfill their norm-referenced assessment requirement must submit an application to the Private School Opportunities (PSO) Program by March 1 of the year prior to when they wish to administer assessments (e.g., applications to administer assessments during the 2025-26 school year would be due March 1, 2025). Applications are posted to the PSO Program webpage in January.
Note: applications to the PSO Program are only required for private school that wish to administer Florida’s statewide, standardized assessments at your private school. Private schools that choose to administer one of the approved norm-referenced assessments listed above are not required to submit an application.
Further information related to the statewide assessment option is available at the K-12 Student Assessment page.
Alternate Assessment Request
If a private school wishes to request to use another assessment, it must provide a letter on school letterhead stating the name of the assessment test and the reasons for requesting the test. In addition, the private school or test publisher must submit appropriate documentation that demonstrates the assessment meets all of the criteria listed below.
- Norming studies that show dates of the studies, definition of the populations sampled, the procedure used to draw the samples, sample sizes, participation rates, and any weighting or smoothing procedure used to make the sample data better represent the population. Norming studies must have been conducted within the last 10 years, with 5 years being preferable.
- Internal consistency/reliability must be reported for content sub-domains (e.g., mathematics, reading) at a minimum of 0.80, and that reliability data be reported for each grade level.
- For any open-ended, constructed-response items, rater agreement information (e.g., exact rater agreement rates, intraclass correlations, or kappa coefficients) should be reported.
- The standard error of measurement and conditional standard error of measurement (at various test score levels) should also be reported.
- The test developer must include a clear description of the construct to be measured, the purpose of the test, intended interpretation of the scores/other test results, and intended test-taking population.
- Documentation must include conceptual, empirical, and theoretical evidence that the test meets its intended purposes and support the intended interpretations of test results for the intended populations.
- Documentation must include evidence that each test is aligned with rigorous content standards and serves as an adequate measure of K-12 student achievement in core academic areas.
Requests for the use of another assessment test must be provided to the Office of Independent Education and Parental Choice in writing by September 15 each year.
Reporting Assessment Results
Participating private schools must report all scholarship students’ scores to the parents and must also submit students' scores to the independent research organization selected by the Department of Education by August 15 each year. Please send copies of score sheets with name, testing date, and national percentile ranking to:
Dr. Bodunrin Akinrinmade
Learning Systems Institute
Florida State University
2010 Levy Avenue, Suite B 3200
Tallahassee, FL 32310
bakinrinmade@fsu.edu