The FCAT is testing our patience

From the Miami Herald, BY MICHAEL PUTNEY, mputney@justnews.com

A friend who’s deeply involved in her children’s schools called the other day thrilled to report that her ninth-grade daughter had scored a 5 on her FCAT, equivalent to an A. A few days later she called again to say her son, a third grader, had earned 5s on both his reading and math FCAT’s. So Shelby and Adam, good on you, as the Aussies would say.

But it’s bad for most other students here and across the state on the latest round of FCATs. Roughly half of all ninth and 10th graders in the state failed the reading FCAT 2.0. The scores for writing were so dismal for third and fourth graders — just 27 percent got a passing grade — that the state Board of Education held an emergency meeting and lowered the grading scale so scores would resemble last year’s, when 81 percent of kids were at or above grade level.

Still, roughly 9,000 third graders in South Florida stand a good chance of not moving on to fourth grade. And a higher-than-expected number of high school seniors may not graduate.

State Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson, assessing the FCAT fiasco, predicted a “wake-up moment” in Florida’s future.

The wake-up moment should happen right now and should start with Robinson. It was on his watch that FCAT policies and standards changed some 18 times since the school year began, according to Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. He contends the changes were inadequately relayed to superintendents and school districts, much less to principals, teachers, students and parents.

Carvalho says almost everyone was caught by surprise this spring when the FCATs were tougher, graded more rigorously and concentrated on knowledge and skills teachers hadn’t been warned about. Bob Martinez, the Coral Gables lawyer who serves as vice chairman of the state education board, says Robinson and the state DOE left the board in the dark about many of the FCAT changes.

It was Martinez who has led the charge to slow down the FCAT changes and temporarily lower the grading scale so that everyone in the education system has a chance to catch up and play on an even field. That’s certainly needed.

But there’s plenty about the explanations and excuses for the pathetic FCAT results that is unacceptable. Too little time to prepare kids to take one high-stakes test? Teachers and their unions complain endlessly that’s all they do, work to get kids ready to take the FCAT and “teach to the test.” But considering these dismal FCAT scores, I get the impression that many teachers are preparing kids on how to take a test, not necessarily to learn and understand the material on the test.

Third and fourth grade teachers complain they were blind-sided by the emphasis in this year’s writing FCAT on grammar, punctuation and spelling. Really, how so? If teachers are doing a good job teaching writing aren’t they insisting on correct grammar, punctuation and spelling along with everything else? Sure, the mechanics of writing aren’t easy, but no literate person can function without a basic understanding of them. I remember what a drag it was many years ago to diagram sentences and identify the parts of speech. Sure glad I was taught to do so.

Every time I go into a South Florida school I come away impressed with the dedication and passion of most principals, teachers and staff. In my visits to classrooms I’ve seen real learning going on, and it’s gratifying. But given these FCAT results, it’s not good enough.

Our best teachers have to be paid more and be less constricted by the demands that their students pass one high-stakes test. Our bad-to-substandard teachers have to be retrained or asked to leave the classroom because they’re causing harm. A student in the classroom of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in a school year, according to Eric Hanushek of Stanford. A student in a very good teacher’s classroom, he says, will learn a year and a half’s worth of material.

Research says the most important part of a child’s education — more than class size, funding or the school he attends — is the quality of the teacher.

Prof. Hanushek says replacing the bottom 6 to 10 percent of bad teachers with an average teacher would raise America’s schools past the middling position we occupy now in world rankings. It would surely bring up our FCAT scores.

Florida’s wake-up moment should be now when it comes to our schools. And it should start with teachers.

Along with that wake-up call to Education Commissioner Robinson.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/29/2822793/fcat-testing-our-patience.html#storylink=cpy