Is the point to strengthen public schools or to destroy them?

The FCAT writing fiasco is not a failure — it’s an opportunity to slow down and get things right. But you do have to wonder, after a decade of increasing education standards and accountability, is the point to strengthen public schools or to des

From the Miami Herald, By Myriam Marquez, mmarquez@MiamiHerald.com

The FCAT writing fiasco is not a failure — it’s an opportunity to slow down and get things right. But you do have to wonder, after a decade of increasing education standards and accountability, is the point to strengthen public schools or to destroy them?

As a mother of two sons who graduated from Florida public high schools, I’ve always been a supporter of tougher education standards. You raise the bar and students will rise to the challenge, as long as they are adequately prepared.

In fact, the FCAT, for all the whining by some parents and educators, has never set the bar that high. A passing grade in reading, math or writing shows adequate proficiency, nothing more. Surely our children can meet that bar. And they do, rich and poor, black, white, Hispanic — they can and do achieve, even those from poor homes or learning English as a second language.

But the FCAT results still show a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic students struggling to pass the test even as the gap with white non-Hispanic students is closing. Poverty can drag down excellence, to be sure, when kids don’t have access to computers or help at home with homework or a full meal in their bellies. The FCAT was meant to spot those trends and push administrators and teachers to address them with extra tutoring, Saturday classes or whatever else would propel them forward.

And there’s the rub, because even as standards have been rising, so have the challenges of rising poverty and tighter public school budgets that have lost billions of dollars statewide since before the recession. Too many public schools, particularly in urban areas, are in need of major repairs. Teachers’ morale is plummeting as they are asked to do ever more while their meager salaries are eaten away by higher costs in health insurance and other benefits. Adding insult to injury, now teacher salaries will be tied directly to their classroom’s FCAT results.

Inject Tallahassee politics — including Gov. Rick Scott’s attempt to diminish the state’s public labor unions, even risking the unconstitutional taking of teachers’ and other public employees’ income to help close a state budget hole, and a failed push by the Legislature to give charter schools more cash for construction even as traditional public schools get nada — and we have an insurrection.

Florida Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson didn’t do his governor any favors with the latest flap over the writing test. With almost three-fourths of all students in fourth grade flunking the writing test under new, tougher parameters, parents joined educators to force a grade curve.

The grading curve just gets us back to the same requirements of last year, so nothing lost, nothing gained.

But politically, Republican elected officials are in trouble with the voters on either side of the FCAT debate after this latest fiasco. Conservatives rightly wonder, why raise standards if you’re going to buckle as soon the tougher results show failure? Liberals rightly point to the dwindling public school budgets, a testing “craze” that zaps teachers’ creativity in the classroom, a revolving door of good teachers exiting to other careers, and they see a Republican assault on public education.

Having pushed out Education Commissioner Eric Smith, who had a strong staff to carry out the state’s education initiatives, Scott picked Robinson to push more reforms last year, leaving little time to implement the changes statewide. Robinson came from Virginia and served as that state’s education secretary after spending years as a charter schools proponent and owner. His staff is relatively new.

Robinson failed on several counts in the FCAT writing fiasco. He failed to properly inform the state Board of Education. The change in the test — giving more attention to spelling and grammar and bringing in two scorers for each test instead of one — was announced to school districts last July or August. Incredibly, the Board of Education wasn’t clued in, never got an impact study to see how the new, more rigorous rubric might affect scores so that the state could take that into account beforehand and — presto! — the writing test turned out to be a political catastrophe.

If the point of reform is to improve each child’s performance — we can only hope — and not to destroy public schools’ reputation so that the entire state turns into a for-profit charter-schools factory, then Florida needs to find the money to improve teacher salaries so we can attract and retain the most talented and pay them their worth. (I support charters as a public choice, by the way, just not their latest construction-money grab while public school students are left in near crumbling schools.)

Despite the dwindling dollars and low morale, public school teachers and principals are creating miracles every day. They are being held accountable. Now taxpayers must hold our elected officials accountable for not investing in public schools. Talking up excellence and producing more rigorous tests — without targeting problem areas for extra funding — produces one result: mediocrity, over and over again.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/19/2807410/hold-politicians-accountable-for.html#storylink=cpy