Exceptional education (ESE) students are also able waive the FCAT requirement to get a Standard High School Diploma. Those ESE students wishing to obtain a regular high school diploma must score a passing grade on the FCAT or receive a waiver for the FCAT. In order to get the waiver, ESE students must prove that they have taken several steps to try to pass the FCAT and must also show that they have improved every time they have taken the test.
The FCAT is either machine-scored or hand-scored, depending on the section. Multiple-choice and gridded-response questions are machine-scored. Performance tasks, such as short-response, extended-response, essay items, are hand-scored. Like several other standardized tests, the raw score does not directly reflect the final score; some questions are considered to be of a higher difficulty level than others and, therefore, carry more scoring weight. This type of scoring is called Item Response Theory (IRT).