The Florida Board of Education voted unanimously to lower the passing grade for a state writing test after complaints from educators that the state pushed through tests with inadequate time for teachers and students to prepare, the News-Press out of Fort Myers, Fla., reports.

The educators blamed the situation for causing low test scores, the news organization reports.

Educators have also complained that the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests, administered to fourth-, eighth and 10th-grade students, counts punctuation and spelling but had not done so before, according to the News-Press.

The vote lowers the passing grade in the test from 4 to 3, and test scores range from 1 to 6, the News-Press reports.

This year, only a third of students passed the test, compared with 80% last year, according to the newspaper.

"When I saw the dramatic drop in scores, I saw that overnight, students didn't just become bad writers," Gerard Robinson, a Florida Department of Education commissioner, told the News-Press. "There should have been more follow-up in the change in rigor, seriousness of the task and the impact on schools."

Joseph Burke, superintendent of Lee County, Fla., Schools, said, "I don't think there is any doubt the students were not prepared for the new standards. When you have that kind of a dramatic drop on a statewide test, you have to conclude that there was a missing element in the preparation, instruction and expectations of what would be demanded of students."