FCAT cheating
You know what they say about paving the road to Hell with good intentions.
The best way to kill a student's interest and initiative is to teach to a test, which the dependency on the FCAT has done nothing but encourage.
The teachers I talk to say that the reason they chose their profession was to prepare children for life by training them how to think.
They want to challenge them, and awaken an intellectual curiosity that will spur them to continue wanting to learn long after their formal education has ended. They did not choose to be teachers in order to cram facts into children's heads so that they could regurgitate them later onto a test paper. Nor do they want their professionalism judged by how well those students managed to regurgitate.
I had a European history teacher in junior high who told me that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. Big deal. Why should I care? Then he told me that we use the words "pork" and "beef" to this day to denote the meat of pigs and cattle because the invading William beat the locals in that battle over 900 years ago. Suddenly, it meant something to me, and I wanted to know more. I became a voracious student of European history.
To me, that's educating.
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
And I know the first line of Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native is "A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight in the vast unenclosed expanse of wilderness known as Egdon Heath." because of the Monty Python "novel writing" sketch (poking fun at reality TV even before it filled the airwaves :-). I don't think any teacher ever branded anything as deeply as that in my brain.
Posted by: Tom | January 20, 2010 6:01 AM
Cheating is wrong. By that I mean that cheating to gain something for yourself personally is wrong. What is being done with these FCAT tests really doesn't bother me at all. I think that kids learn really well when teachers can relate topics to things that can help them understand them just like in your example Chan. If teachers give students information that will help them succeed on these tests then so be it. The net net here is proably that the kids will learn that if they use a certain word in a sentence, it has a certain meaning. And the kids are learning during that process.
The FCATs are a joke. Every single teacher (and I know a bunch) hates the FCATs. They all tell me that they spend their time teaching to the test. Getting kids ready for the test because it has been made clear to them that the test results matter. With the state tying test results to teacher's compensation or principal's compensation or any other monetary rewards, they make this type of "Cheating" necessary. I suppose it is a nice upside that the kids will actually learn something useful from it all.
Posted by: FCAT is bad Mmmmkay | January 20, 2010 9:17 AM
I believe the FCAT is the reason that Florida is ranked at the bottom of the country in education. I have a daughter in 4th grade who cannot spell, has terrible penmanship and struggles with basic math. I was told that there is no time for spelling and if I want her to learn penmanship I will have to teach her myself. They don't have time for any of the foundations of early education, just teaching the kids to pass the test. My daughter knows what an expository storyline is(because that is what is on the writing test) but can't spell "know". Is this the best we can do? I talk to the teachers every year and every one of them is frustrated and disheartened that they are forced to give the kids a subpar education. Homework consists of multiple choice worksheets to mirror the test. No critical thinking involved, just learning how to choose the correct answer. It makes me so sad for these kids.
Posted by: Michele | March 9, 2010 3:11 PM
Another Jeb Bush mistake (that family is RIFE with mistakes, it seems). Goes to show that the Republicans are ignorant when it comes to education.
Posted by: Painkiller Jeff | March 11, 2010 7:53 PM