Florida's FCAT farce just gets worse

Tampa Bay - St. Petersburg Times ^ | July 12, 2012 | Staff Editorial

[Cincinatus' Wife]

No wonder Gov. Rick Scott and Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson have suggested in recent weeks they are ready to reassess the FCAT. After more than a decade of leading the national charge on school accountability, Florida on Wednesday released 2011-12 grades for public elementary and middle schools that were largely meaningless. The grades have been tweaked, adjusted and tweaked again. Even ardent supporters of the A+ plan appeared willing to concede that the process, which began with the ill-conceived grading of the state's FCAT writing test, has been a complete mess.

Now leaders in Tallahassee should begin the serious discussion about what is next. Florida's plan to jettison the FCAT for end-of-course exams is still two years away. That's too long to wait to overhaul the A+ Plan if there's any hope of restoring faith with teachers, parents and the public that Florida's school accountability program is actually fair.

Wednesday's results would have looked even worse if the state Board of Education had continued on its original track, backed by Scott and Robinson, to dramatically raise requirements for student passing scores on the FCAT, on which school grades are largely based. By May, it was clear the state was moving too fast and risked labeling thousands of additional students and their schools as failures.

Results from the FCAT writing exam — which included tougher grading and a higher passing score — suggested that in just one year Florida schools went from teaching 81 percent of fourth-graders to write at grade level to just 27 percent. Robinson and the education board quickly recalibrated the scores. But the massaging didn't stop the

[T-Bird45]

"...labeling thousands of additional students and their schools as failures.

I suspect there are plenty of employers and colleges that would be glad to tell them that and wouldn't even have to look at FCAT scores to provide evidence to support the assertion.

[SeminoleCounty]

The FCAT is really just Big Government Socialism.....Jeb Bush’s link to the GW Bush-Ted Kennedy “No Child Left Behind” liberal big federal government control of education

Best to do away w the FCAT, it cost $250 million to administer, and, after reviewing job applications for my employer here in Florida....the kids still cannot write a complete sentence or spell their names right

FCAT = Socialism

[The Working Man]

When I lived in Florida and my kids went to the public school I really got irritated at the teachers always complaining about “Teaching to the FCAT”.

The whole point was to give the kids a well rounded education in the basics and then test to see if they had “learned the material”. Instead they just changed their curriculum and it became worse as they ignored whole portions of previous curriculum that really had the effect in the “long term” of rounding out the kids education and giving them context for what they were being taught.

In the long run the teachers and the school administrations did all they could to sabotage a potentially powerful tool,(FCAT), in the “arsenal of teaching’.