EDUCATORS CAST DOUBTS ON FCAT RESULTS -- A historic dive in fifth-grade FCAT scores has elementary school principals across Florida questioning the results. State education officials say they triple-checked the results released this week that showed a 5 percent drop in fifth grade reading scores. They had an independent consultant check, too. No problems were found. But Pinellas and Hillsborough school officials are asking the state to check again, a telling sign about the FCAT's cloudy credibility. Fresh in their minds: last year's disclosure that the state had botched one of the FCAT tests in 2006, a mistake that overstated the same group of students achievements in the third grade. "You always know you can have a tire blow out on the interstate," Hillsborough testing director John Hilderbrand said Wednesday. "But until it happens, you don't think it's something that will happen to you." The latest round of head-scratching began Tuesday, when statewide test scores released by the state Department of Education showed students performing better in every grade and subject except one: fifth-grade reading. Fifth-grade scores have never dropped since the state began giving the test in 2001. And now the number of kids reading at grade level or above had fallen 5 percent -- a substantial dip that has been matched only once before in the 2006 fourth-grade reading results.

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