The FCAT is a series of standardized tests administered annually to third- through tenth-grade students in all Florida public schools. The tests monitor the academic progress of students in the subjects of mathematics, reading, writing and science, and include questions with a varied range of difficulty and complexity. According to the "About the FCAT" website "the FCAT Reading, Mathematics, and Science tests require students to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the information presented and to apply strategies or procedures they have learned." The writing component requires students to draft original essays in response to real-life topics.
The Sunshine State Standards is the measuring stick of the FCAT. These standards, adopted by the Florida Department of Education in 1996, are, according to the "About the FCAT" website, "broad statements that describe what a child should know and be able to do at every grade level." They cover mathematics, social studies, language arts, science, foreign languages, the arts and health/physical education. The overall standards are then divided into smaller units called "benchmarks," which designate specific skills students are expected to learn.
The FCAT was first administered in 1998 in an effort to raise the statewide system of assessment to a higher level. However, Florida's assessment program actually began with the Education Accountability Act of 1971, which called for establishing uniform statewide education objectives and the uniform testing of students' progress toward the objectives. The FCAT Handbook explains that "the resulting educational objectives included only minimum requirements, in contrast to the more extensive, detailed, and rigorous standards that have since evolved," and testing only included a sample of students instead of the more inclusive test base of today.
The Florida Department of Education realized that, in order for the state to improve, more comprehensive evaluation data was needed than was gathered in that initial assessment. Therefore, in 1976, assessments were administered to all public school students in grades three, five, eight and eleven. Eleventh grader students were also given the country's first high school graduation test, a functional literacy test. This graduation test, or State Standard Assessment Test, was moved to grade ten in 1981, revised and renamed the High School Competency Test in 1984, and then moved back to the eleventh grade in 1992. When the Sunshine State Standards were adopted in 1996, the old assessment tests were insufficient for monitoring academic progress according to the new standards. Development of the FCAT began in 1996, and the FCAT was first administered in 1998.
Originally, only four grade levels took the FCAT--fourth, fifth, eighth and 10th--and the test covered only reading and mathematics. In 2010, the FCAT was administered to all public school students in Florida in grades three through 11 and included mathematics, reading, writing and science.