Hurricane FCAT is wreaking havoc in Florida's Pinellas school district - the nation's 22nd-largest school district with over 113,000 students:
In a major shift this year in Pinellas schools, teachers have been told to move much faster through lessons and to narrow their instruction to material most likely to be on the state's standardized test.
Elementary students already have taken two practice tests that mirror the content of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test and its fill-in-the-bubble format. Three more tests are scheduled over the next 20 weeks, designed to build students' stamina and to root out gaps in knowledge before the real FCAT in February and March...
The change has touched off a robust debate that is carving the nation's 22nd-largest school system into two camps. One side accepts standardized testing as the new way in education; the other views the FCAT's snowballing importance as a scourge that impedes genuine learning.
Some teachers say the changes give them much-needed tools to help their students succeed on the test...Others, accustomed to more freedom in the classroom, object to the new program as hand-holding and an affront to their professionalism...
School Board members also are complaining, upset that administrators did not brief them on such a large initiative until they rolled it out across the district.
Parents, too, are only now being informed. But the district administrators say they had no choice - almost half of Pinellas students are not performing at grade level. (No, this is not how is has to be - the FCAT grade levels are not norm-referenced, nor set at the average or the median, so there's no reason for half the population to always be reading below grade level. In this case, standards are set such that every kid, theoretically, could perform at grade level or above. There are norm-referenced portions to the FCAT, but the Sunshine State Standards are benchmarks.)
The district's mantra when presenting the new program has been: "If not this, then what? If not now, then when? If not you, then who? Our students can't wait"...
The initiative focuses on reading and math from kindergarten through high school. It has three components, though two of them have yet to be implemented in middle and high schools. The program to narrow instruction to FCAT knowledge is known as "essential learnings," which is in place across all grades.
To describe it, district officials use the example of a third-grade class learning word endings. Because the FCAT is likely to deal only with the endings "s" and "es," teachers should make sure enough students master them before plowing ahead to nontested endings such as "ing."
In math, the same class needs to master 45-, 90- and 180-degree angles before studying other angles that likely won't be on the test.
And so the passionate statements flow back and forth; one side insists that this is "teaching to the test" and the other side says that this is the best way to get all Florida's students up-to-speed on the standards.
Posted by kswygert at October 4, 2004 01:37 PM