Parents who opted out of Florida school tests challenge law

A group of parents from across the state are challenging a state law that prevents children from being promoted to the fourth grade if they score poorly on a mandated reading test.

Circuit Judge Karen Gievers held an emergency hearing to consider a request to block the law so that more than a dozen children from six counties — Broward, Orange, Osceola, Hernando, Pasco and Seminole — would not have to repeat the third grade.

David Jordan, an attorney for the Florida Department of Education, said it was important to have the testing requirement because he asserted that reports cards do not show whether a child is actually capable of reading.

[...] Michelle Rhea, whose nine-year-old daughter is attending a school in Maitland in central Florida, said it was wrong to hold her back in the third grade after she had gotten good grades and had been told there was nothing wrong with her reading skills.