FCAT Feverby
Miles Woolley
Anyone living in my home state of Florida knows from the title of this that FCAT stands for Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. The FCAT is Florida’s response to President Bush’s No Child Left Behind initiative. Educators affectionately use the term "Nickle-B" when describing No Child Left Behind. Many of us pronounce the FCAT acronym "F-THAT." Further explanation of that moniker would require a PG-13 rating. Florida gets a double dose of Bushism because Jeb Bush, our governor is you-know-who’s brother. Jeb has a plan called the A+ (or perhaps it’s the A++) Plan. Briefly, the combination of the two influences in Florida education amounts to Uncle Sam and Brother Jeb sticking their noses way too far into public education. On the surface, it may appear that the FCAT (are you pronouncing that correctly?) would provide a standard by which to judge our students’ progress. After all, it allegedly tests their abilities in math, reading, and science. And if the rumors are true, more subject areas will be added in the future. So an outsider might conclude the tests only validate the actions and efforts of public education. What could possibly wrong with that, one might ask? The first concern teachers have with this test is that many of the questions are outrageously obscure. I have peeked at a test or two (probably should not admit to that sin…) and I have seen questions that are absurd, difficult to answer correctly, and hold no validity in measuring a student’s academic abilities. I have seen pointless math problems that many well-educated adults would have to struggle to solve. The next concern teachers have with the FCAT is that every student who wishes to graduate from a public school in Florida must pass the test. This puts tremendous stress on our students. In my school, we have a large Hispanic population and many of our students communicate in English only with teachers and only during the time they are in class. They speak Spanish to their friends, speak Spanish at home, watch Spanish television, listen to Spanish radio, and read the Spanish newspaper. It is common for our students to test very high on the math portion of the FCAT yet perform poorly on the reading/writing portions. A person reading this article in Middle America, or some place where everyone in town looks the same and speaks only English might think, well, screw them! Let them learn to speak our language. When the population of an area actually is dominated by Spanish speakers, "our" de facto language in reality is their language. I happen to have a former student who is finishing medical school at Tufts University who failed the writing portion of the FCAT on her first attempt. I often reflect on the important contribution she will be making to humanity and think of how important this paper test must have been to her when she took it. Another concern the teaching community has with the state-sponsored assessment is that Brother Jeb has installed incentives for schools to perform well. This amounts to granting letter grades to the public schools based on every school’s FCAT results. If a school earns an A or a B rating, the teachers, administrators, and staff get a nice cash bonus. If a school raises their performance up from a D or an F, they also get a bonus. Depending on the fuzzy math the state uses, the bonus may range in the $1,000 plus range. A Theory X person might conclude that offering incentives to teachers to improve student performance ought to get results. One might further conclude that a state-sponsored test would assure accountability and uniformity across the state. In practice, however, neither is true. Part of the breakdown is due to the way people settled and where they choose to live. Miami-Dade County is not a melting pot of cultures and ethnic groups. It is more accurately described as a salad bowl. The many neighborhoods in the county (which also defines our school district) retain their particular identities. Like choose to live with like. Neighborhoods are defined by culture, socioeconomics, and ethnicity. Hence, we have sections of the district where the rich and influential live, sections where blue-collar families live, and sections where the poor and the very poor live. A school that is located in a very poor section of the district, or one that is located in a neighborhood where English is the second or third language spoken generally earns low scores on the FCAT tests. The county further suffers from the constant movement of families in and out of the district. Yet the one-size-fits-all FCAT test is administered to every student. And the hold-your-feet-to-the-fire mentality is applied to every teacher in the district. The result is that certain schools always do very well, certain other schools always earn the dreaded F rating, and a third group of schools (like the one where I teach) are the definition of a C school. The "failing" schools lose their faculties to turnover at an alarming rate. The A schools have waiting lists of teachers vying to get in. The test becomes high stakes for students because they must pass it to graduate. The test is high stakes for administrators because it is used as a yardstick by which their administrative abilities can be measured. It is a huge plume in the hat of the principal who can turn a school’s performance around. The test is high stakes for teachers because of the monetary incentive. The importance of the FCAT has reached such heights that it is now cited in our lesson plans, our school goals, our accreditation reviews, and even our applications for funding. If an applicant can tie an FCAT goal to a proposal for a special project, it has a good chance of being funded. One could make the truthful observation that we are teaching to the test. The importance of the FCAT is drilled into the heads of our students from elementary school through middle school and through high school. Children in third grade must pass a version of the FCAT to be promoted to fourth grade. Eighth graders must pass an FCAT test or they will be placed in remedial classes the following year. Tenth graders take the FCAT required for graduation. Tenth graders who fail can re-take the test in their junior and senior year, if necessary. Another reason the test fails to measure performance and is not a valid indicator of success is that not all students were created equally before they started their progression through the education mill. The very qualities that make us all different – whether it is a gift or a learning disability – destroy the cookie cutter efforts of paper tests. I happen to be one of those weirdo teachers who believe that perhaps college is not for everyone and that people can live successful, happy lives in non-professional careers. I further believe that success or failure can not be directly tied to bubbling on answer sheets. We are now in the month that the FCAT is administered to our students. As one might imagine, the school is doing everything our administration can imagine to get the students to do their best on the test. Today, for example, we passed out plastic bracelets to our students embossed with "Eagles…Make It Happen." Every teacher was issued a t-shirt emblazoned with the same slogan. Our morning announcements always conclude with making it happen. Surely the t-shirts and bracelets are going to earn the school at least a B grade! March 7, 2006 Miles Woolley [send him mail] is a disabled Vietnam veteran living in Miami, Florida. He served with the 9th Infantry Division in The Mekong Delta in a Ranger unit doing reconnaissance 1968–69 where he received a gunshot wound to the head leaving one side severely paralyzed. He is a father of four grown children and grandfather of seven, including a set of triplets. Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com |