How advisors should talk about the FCLE

Three questions account for most of what students ask an advisor about civic literacy: do I have to take this, is it a class or a test, and what score do I need. Below is accurate wording for each one, written so you can forward it or drop it into an advising note as it stands.

I wrote it this way on purpose. An advisor answering the tenth version of the same question in a week reaches for whatever is quickest, and the quickest accurate answer only exists if someone writes it down first.

"Do I have to take this?"

Short version: if a student first enrolled at a Florida public college or university in the 2018-19 academic year or later, the requirement reaches them. Section 1007.25 of the Florida Statutes sets the requirement itself, and it applies across the Florida College System and the State University System.

What to say: "Your entry year decides whether this applies to you, not your major or which campus you're on. Let's check your degree audit for the civic literacy line."

What not to say: "Everyone has to take it." Some students genuinely fall outside the requirement as written, and telling a student who is out of scope that they are in scope sends them to study for something that does not apply to them. The full breakdown of who is reached and who is not is in who has to take the FCLE, which is written to be forwarded directly to a student asking this exact question.

"Is this a class, or a test, or both?"

For most students currently enrolling, it is both. The statute requires a passing score on an assessment and successful completion of an approved civic literacy course, not one or the other. Students who first enrolled earlier, before the 2021-22 catalog year, generally worked under an either-or version of the same requirement.

What to say: "These are two separate requirements that happen to share one topic. Finishing the course doesn't finish the assessment, and finishing the assessment doesn't finish the course. Your catalog year tells us which version applies to you."

What not to say: "You're good" after confirming only one half. This is the single most common way an accurate answer becomes a wrong one. The course shows up on a transcript, someone checks the transcript, and the student walks away believing a half-finished requirement is a finished one. Ask about both halves out loud, every time, even when the student only asked about one. The cohort-by-cohort version of this rule, including transfer students and dual enrollment, is laid out in what Florida actually requires.

"What score do I need?"

Sixty percent on the assessment, which is the Florida Civic Literacy Exam: eighty selected-response questions, four competencies weighted twenty-five percent each, one hundred sixty minutes. The passing score is set by State Board of Education Rule 6A-10.02413, Florida Administrative Code, and it is the same number for every student in Florida. There is no campus-level cut score to look up and no sliding scale by major.

What to say: "Sixty percent, set by state rule, same for everyone. It's a straight percent correct, not a scaled score, so a practice result means what it says."

What not to say: anything that implies a higher number is the real requirement. Some practice materials hold students to a tougher bar than sixty percent on purpose, as a cushion against game-day conditions, and that is a reasonable thing for a course to do. It is not the state's number, and a student who has only ever seen the tougher bar can walk away thinking they need it to graduate. If a student wants the full arithmetic behind the sixty percent figure, that lives in what score do you need on the FCLE.

A note on tone

None of the three answers above tell a student what to do. They describe what the rule says and point to where the fuller version lives. That is deliberate. An advisor is not positioned to tell a student whether to retake the assessment this term or next, and neither are we. The decision belongs to the student and whoever at your institution owns the academic plan; the job of accurate language is just to make sure that decision gets made with the right facts in front of it.

If your campus is working through this at scale rather than one conversation at a time, how the requirement lands on your campus covers the cohort mechanics and what tends to move a pass rate. Our free practice test is forty questions, ten per competency, and we're glad to have advisors send students to it directly with no setup required on your end.

Statutes and State Board rules are revised over time, and institutions apply them with their own local procedures. Confirm current wording with your registrar or assessment center before you put any of this in writing.