FCAT Scratch Fever
Maybe it takes a childless person like Yours Truly to speak the truth in a Nixon-Goes-To-China sort of way.
From my dispassionate perspective, the FCAT is superlative at teaching kids how to take a test. They may, if they’re lucky, pick up a few other skills by accident, like reading and writing--nothing that probably couldn’t happen more efficiently and effectively were their educators not so distracted by teaching to the FCAT.
I watch my parent colleagues rend their garments over the stress the FCAT creates in their children, and by extension their families, and I wonder if it’s worth it. One was lamenting the fact that her daughter went to school and took the test with a fever. She wasn’t quite sick enough—or was she?—to suffer the consequences of missing it now and having to make it up later. My colleague asked herself if she was being a bad mother.
My guess is that Jeb Bush dreamed up the whole idea of a standardized assessment exam when he saw his older brother come home one Christmas break from Yale, flop down on the sofa with a beer and flip open a copy of The Incredible Hulk.
“Now there’s an example of schools failing in their mission,” he thought to himself…and the rest is history.
CHAN LOWE has been the Sun Sentinel’s first and only editorial cartoonist for the past twenty-six years. Before that, he worked as cartoonist and writer for the Oklahoma City Times and the Shawnee (OK) News-Star.
Comments
As near as I can tell, all fads in education (whether instigated by educators themselves, or by outside meddlers) have one thing in common: They are simplistic gimmicks to try to avoid work. If you really want to measure the effectiveness of schools, you'd want to track graduates and see how many go on to successful lives, but that is a lot more work than some stupid test designed primarily to enrich friends in the standardized testing business. One of my fondest memories of education stupidity is the "alternate alphabet". English is, after all, a ridiculous mess, so let's teach some other language instead, one which is easier to teach and learn, of course it isn't useful for anything, but it sure is easier to teach :-).
Posted by: Tom | March 10, 2009 8:02 PM
As a former Educator, the FCAT is a joke. We had standardized testing that gave us an idea of how kids were doing prior to JEB's winner take all exam.
We also had the infamous Functional Literacy Exam in 1980 as a result of a NE High School student's law suit. It accomplished the same thing--zip!! And when they first brought it out, they tied graduation to passing it. As soon as a group of students got their results, they walked in and demanded their diplomas and the schools, to their FTE funding detriment, had to provide them.
Almost every "innovation" in teaching is a result of lowering the bar. While I was taking Elementary Ed Methods courses in the early 90's the idea was Whole Method. These ideas seem to always spring forth from some "Educational Consultant" trying to justify their contract.
Posted by: Jeff | March 11, 2009 10:45 AM
The Jeb Bush explantion was great!
Posted by: mel | March 13, 2009 8:46 AM
Jeb Bush came up with the FCAT when his brother Neil got into the standardized test business, look it up!
Posted by: History Major | March 16, 2009 12:36 PM