FCAT Scratch Fever. Florida to make FCAT harder while cutting 2nd chance to take it.

[madfloridian]

The people in Florida in charge of education do not have a clue what real teaching and real learning is about. They only have the testing mindset. It is geared to cause the schools to fail, because the kids are missing a chance at real and deep knowledge while they are practicing for tests.

They have good company in the new national Secretary of Education who agrees with Florida. He wants much of the stimulus money for education to go for increased testing and forming of testing databases to judge teachers better by test scores.

Part of the stimulus money, he told Sam Dillon of The New York Times, will be used so that states can develop data systems, which will enable them to tie individual student test scores to individual teachers, greasing the way for merit pay. Another part of the stimulus plan will support charters and entrepreneurs.

As the schools fail turn them into something else, charter, magnet, choice.

Chan Lowe of the Sun Sentinel had a cartoon recently which put it all in clear perspective.



From his blog:

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.

But guess what? They are changing the rules on the FCAT, taking away the retest chances and taking away one of the two graders. The grading is already suspect and holding up many report cards right now at year's end.

FCAT changes

Continue Previous Reductions: All reductions made for 2009 and 2010 will continue for the new FCAT to be implemented in 2011 and beyond.
- The FCAT Parent Network will no longer be available (printed reports for students/parents will continue to be provided).
- Summer retakes will no longer be administered.

That summer retake has been hope of many students who are not naturally good test takers. That's a shame.

Here are some of the new changes coming next year to make the test harder. It allows for little time for adjustment by students and teachers.

FCAT Squared

As if math weren't tough enough for some students, now Florida is amping up the standards for the FCAT and increasing the rigor in the classroom.

"It's going to be a tough impact on these kids for the first couple years," said Jim Bobbitt, Pensacola High School calculus and Algebra 2 teacher. "There's a big jump from the old FCAT to the new one, and we'll have the kids coming into high school that won't have had as much time to learn the new standards."

...""Our next year's ninth-graders, when they get to the 10th grade, they will be tested on 75 percent geometry after either not having completed geometry or in some cases not even having started a geometry course," Montgomery said. She said the current 10th-grade FCAT contains about 30 percent to 40 percent geometry.

The result is that the curriculum in every grade is being changed so younger students are getting a taste of higher-level math concepts.

...The most challenging part of this transition, school officials said, is that next year, students will be tested on the current standards while having to learn material for the new test.

Sounds good on the surface if you don't realize what it is happening. The students are not learning in depth. They are learning on the surface. They are being turned into test taking robots. And making the tests harder will not accomplish anything at all.

This is the handiwork of Jeb Bush and his education foundation.