It seems like quite juxtaposition that Florida’s fourth
graders perform so well on the NAEP, the nation’s report card, while the other
grades only do as well or lag behind their peers from around the nation.
Actually since Florida fails many of its third graders it really makes sense.
Many of the fourth graders were two-year third graders or
were forced to spend a summer remediating before promotion. In effect we are
rigging the game in fourth grade by making sure the students as a group there
have had significantly extra time to learn what the need to and that allows
them to outperform their peers from around the nation.
I have agreed with very little of Florida’s accountability
system over he last fifteen years but here I actually think this is good
policy, not to fail kids that do poorly on one test, but to require extra
remediation. Some of our children especially those mired in poverty need more
time to learn and less time between grades so they don’t lose what they did.
Budget cuts statewide have practically eliminated or
seriously reduced summer education something many of our kids could use. I
think if we are going to be serious then we need to open up more summer school
opportunities.
Some people talk about burnout for both teachers and
students alike but I think at least for teachers many of whom take summer jobs
this is just a red herring to save money. As for students if done correctly
where opportunities to have fun are mixed with opportunities to learn it can be
very beneficial. Then when I was in high school a little over 20 years ago,
every summer I took summer gym. I was able to earn an extra credit, get some
exercise and it stopped me from running the streets unsupervised, what parent
today would turn that down?
Since they made sure to flunk tenthgraders to the streets using the FCAT. Less boys left to even test in twelfth grade. So it is overall even worse.
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