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.

[imdjh]

1. Does the FCAT come in flavors?

""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.

It's been awhile since I was in school, but as I recall, a person could graduate from high school back then without ever taking geometry. If you were A track then you took Algebra in 8th, Geometry in 9th, Algebra II/Trig in 10th grade. If you weren't in A Track, you took Math 8 , Math 9 , and Math 10.

Do different tracks take different FCAT tests?

[LisaM]

6. I took geometry in 10th grade

And, BTW, I got very high math scores in my PSAT, ACT, and SAT tests. We had Algebra in 9th grade, Geometry in 10th, Algebra II in 11th, and in 12th, Trig or Solid Geometry (at that time, my high school didn't offer calculus, it does now, of course - not that it was the dark ages, but it was a smaller school).

[ddeclue]

19. I took Algebra I in 8th grade, Geometry in 9th, Algebra II in 10th, pre-calc and trig in 11th

and a full year of calculus and a half year of plane analytic geometry in 12th grade.

That's 5-1/2 years of math that some people take at the College level that I completed before graduating high school.

I also had 4 years of English, 4 years of Sciences, 4 years of concert and marching band, 2 years of French, 1 year of political science, and 1 year of U.S. history in high school.

School needs to be tougher on their curriculum - the students need to study harder and take school seriously.

Standardized testing is OK and needs to be done but it should not absorb the entire curriculum.

Finally Florida needs to spend a lot more on education if they expect better test scores.

[dkofos]

2. They don't care about the kids education, they care about selling tests.

And when they get the public schools closed, they will be right there
with the charter school alternative.

Don't forget, there are billion$ in the public school coffers
that need the free market love.

[imdjh]

3. In all fairness

Sure, there is profiteering in the state around education and every other spending item. Prisons, school lunches, roads, roads, roads, bridges, bridges bridges, etc.... but those are a few people who directly benefit from that kind of corruption. I think that your average person, even your average legislator simply doesn't know what to do about the schools. And neither does anyone it seems.

[OmahaBlueDog]

5. Your Republican Florida legislator certainly does know what to do..

...they want to privatize the public schools.

The leading advocates of the FCATS are also the leading advocates of so-called "school choice". Their answer is to use the FCATS as a tool to hand out vouchers.

[imdjh]

8. It isn't just Republicans and fundies who want vouchers any more.

It isn't just white flighters who can't move any farther out. It isn't just Baptists who want their kids taught creationism. It's all kinds of people these days. There has been a huge shift in who supports vouchers. I know, because I is one.

[OmahaBlueDog]

10. I have nothing against private school...

..and if that's what you want, pay for it. Heck, home school your kids.

Taxpayers pay for public schools to get people performing the services we need from all walks of life. It's like paying for roads or bridges -- we all benefit; I may not drive on a bridge, but the truckers who bring my food and consumer goods and raw materials do, so I benefit from the bridge. Taking money out of the public schools because you don't like what they offer your kid is just as silly as saying you don't want to pay for roads and bridges because you don't drive.

[imdjh]

12. Do you maintain that less than half of the per pupil expenditure goes into the student?

It seems like that's the only way your argument works. If the per pupil expenditure is $8,000 but the voucher is only $4000 then by pulling the student out of the public school you are removing 100% of the student, but only half of the per pupil expenditure.

Your roads and bridges argument fails because as you yourself note, despite your not using those roads and bridges, they are used to provide you. In the school scenario, you are removing the student and she is being provided for elsewhere.

[OmahaBlueDog]

13. No, your argument fails because you see the argument in terms of your removed student

The idea is to provide quality education for everyone's kid. Public education provides you in the same way as roads and bridges, and in the same way healthcare is provided in Canada. When we pay for public education, we are paying for the education of the people who repair our vehicles, manage our day care centers, answer phones at the law office...whatever. For public education to be work, it must be fully funded by all the beneficiaries. You benefit from public education, whether or not you have a kid, or whether or not your kid is educated in the system. It's like Canadian healthcare -- citizens can opt to go to private physicians, but they cannot opt out of paying into the system, which is there to benefit Canadian society as a whole; whatever they pay to a private doctor is out of their pocket.

[imdjh]

14. It's still different

If you remove 20 students from the public school system, you need one less teacher. If you remove 360 students you need one less elementary school. If you remove 720 students you need one less middle school, and 1400 students one less high school. The school systems recognize this. The point of disagreement at this juncture isn't whether there will be vouchers, but if they will be available to anyone who wants them rather than simply for special needs students, or other tests.

In Florida, you have to throw your child to the wolves before you can get a voucher. That's what needs to be changed- vouchers should be available to any student who is eligible to attend school in Florida.

We have day care centers?

[OmahaBlueDog]

15. So you think shrinking the public school system is a desirable goal?

Hmm.. that's an interesting POV for a progressive message board.

Here's another thought - stop trying to run Florida on the cheap. It's not 1950 with a transient, snowbird population anymore. In Nebraska, we pay property tax at twice the rate of Floridians, our sales tax is 1% higher, and we have state income tax. Here's a shocker -- we have great schools.

I don't get the "we have day care centers" question - I lived in Florida for 20 years - you couldn't drive 10 blocks and not see one. Affordable day care -- another subject.

[imdjh]

16. good for you

Hmm.. that's an interesting POV for a progressive message board.

If someone doesn't adhere to your idea of doctrine, especially if it's a self-serving doctrine which doesn't have anything to do with liberal or progressive thought, then you accuse them of being a heretic. That's fucked up. You do know that there are more than Baptists and Jesuits running private schools, right? We have hippie schools, and Quaker schools, and for all intents and purposes progressive nonreligious Episcopalian schools, and SDA schools, and private schools for disadvantaged black kids, Hare Krishna school, Scientology school , Spanish school, Chinese school, and pretty much you name it.

And it's not about thinking that shrinking the public schools is a desirable goal, it's about choices, real choices and not the illusion of choices that the public schools currently offer.



Here's another thought - stop trying to run Florida on the cheap. It's not 1950 with a transient, snowbird population anymore. In Nebraska, we pay property tax at twice the rate of Floridians, our sales tax is 1% higher, and we have state income tax. Here's a shocker -- we have great schools.

Your per pupil expenditure for Omaha is $8202, ours is $7861. A whopping 4.3% difference! Supposedly, the high school we're going to next year is great. And if it's not, then what can I do about it? Hope that in ten years the public schools will be better? It will be too late.

I'm thrilled that Nebraska is wonderful, why do you care if Florida has vouchers?

[DollyM]

18. when our son was in public school . . .

He had a really good third grade teacher and he enjoyed learning. Then the ISTAT testing time came along and this nice teacher turned into a raving lunatic. She sent nasty notes home to the parents of the kids that she deemed were not "trying hard enough" and when we went to talk to her about this she said that she was competing with family time and the kids needed to spend more time on home work and less on family time! I could not believe my ears but I knew she was a pressure cooker that was being pressed from the top down. She crammed fractions down the throats of third graders for two weeks and then they took the standardized tests and life returned to normal. No more fractions back to regular programing of addition, subtraction, multiplication and simple division. I got her to admit to me that she was teaching to the test. After my son got the teacher from hell in fourth grade and came home from school crying every day and actually yelled at my husband in front of our son, we did indeed pull our son out of school to home school him and have never looked back. He gets what he needs in an education without lining the pockets of some testing agency.

[dkofos]

7. In all fairness the PROFITEERS should be JAILED.

You're right about the average person not knowing, but that is not their job to know.
But with a little effort they can find out.

The same goes for "average legislator". Only it is their job to find out.
And if they won't, it's time for them to find a new job.

[imdjh]

9. I must not have worded that well

I meant that that the average legislator or person doesn't know how to improve the schools under the current structure. That no one does. I stand by that. The corruption is bad, but it's not the reason the schools aren't safe for the teachers or the students, it's not the reason the teachers can't teach at the level they once could.

[OmahaBlueDog]

11. Schools aren't safe because our justice system has failed us, not our educational system

[OmahaBlueDog]

4. This is one of the big reasons we left Sunrise and went to Omaha

It's not that they don't have standardized tests, but they don't build the whole curriculum around passing it.

[madfloridian]

17. Yes, Florida has built the whole curriculum around the test.

In effect that is true. Live or die by the FCAT.

[madfloridian]

20. Every time I post about education...

I realize it is mostly a lost cause. Public school teachers have been the bad guys for so long that too many parents use them as scapegoats instead of taking responsibility for their own children's behavior.

So many teachers still are able to rise above the mediocre Florida school system. Yet they are treated just as shabbily here and talked about just as badly as if they were inferior to all students and parents.

Propaganda works very well. :shrug:

The corporations want a piece of the education pie, and now under Arne Duncan they will get it.

And the liberal forums won't fight for the public schools because they have been so tarnished by people like Obama and Arne saying they had better do better.

:shrug:

I mean really...did you ever think you see the day when there would be no one left to defend public education?