Five Reasons The Anti-FCAT Resolutions Won’t Work

Five Reasons the Anti-FCAT Resolutions Won’t Work

By John O’Connor

1.      
Merit Pay — Thanks to the Student Success Act
every school district in the state is developing a way to pay teachers based on
their performance. Half of that assessment depends on whether a teacher
improves a student’s FCAT scores based on a complex statistical formula.

The assessments
currently being used are already the subject of a lawsuit and may well be
eliminated. It would behoove the state to find a much better way to evaluate
teacher. A teacher’s effectiveness cannot be accurately measured by simply
factoring student gains. And in reality, 100% of that evaluation is based on test
scores because administrators can change the 50% completed by observation when the
test scores arrive. So even if a teacher has been rated highly effective, that
score be dropped if test scores don’t reflect the same. When that starts
happening this summer, imagine the repercussions.

2.      
The No Child Left Behind Waiver— Florida is one
of a handful of states which has been granted a waiver from the federal No
Child Left Behind law. That waiver hinges on a tough state designed
accountability system that measures whether schools and teachers are doing
their job.

The FCAT is the backbone of that
accountability system. Without the FCAT the federal government could revoke the
waiver. And if No Child Left Behind was a better option, why go through the
hassle of applying for the waiver?

See #1.  Also, Florida politicians are the ones who
really wanted this waiver. FEA was involved at the beginning of the application
process, but our current governor and legislators did not invite union input as
they moved forward with implementing the waiver. You would be hard pressed to
find a parent or educator in our state that is happy with what is happening in
Florida public schools this year as a result of RTTT.

3.      
Politics — Any effort to get rid of the FCAT
would require legislative action, and the current legislature isn’t likely to.
In general Republicans (and many Democrats) support the state accountability
system.

ELECTED politicians may become very inclined to listen to school boards
and parents as election time draws closer. Expect to hear more on education,
not less.

4.      
A better test – Florida earned an ‘A’ in
accountability on Education Week’s annual “Quality Counts” rankings. The state
scored the highest ranking for standards and school accountability, and was
among the nation’s best for assessments.

Why would Education Week’s
“Quality Counts” be considered the gold standard for evaluating assessments?
Why does Florida want to continue spending money on these assessments when
students could be evaluated using portfolios and teacher judgment? The teachers
in the public school classrooms are professionals. Parents of students in
private schools are allowed the privilege of judging for themselves if their
child is receiving a quality education. If parent “choice” is so important in
Florida, why aren’t parents of students in the public schools given the same
opportunity? Why do their children have to be subjected to high stakes testing?

5.      
Common Core — The final reason the FCAT won’t be
scrapped is that it’s already going away as part of the national move to adopt
Common Core standards…New assessment test will be part of Common Core, with the
goal of allowing state comparisons. Florida is among the state’s leading those
efforts, which also have the backing of former Gov. Jeb Bush and influential
state education groups.

Common Core Standards were simply developed to provide additional
opportunities for publishing companies to write new tests, curriculum, software,
textbooks, and materials to be used to remediate students. Florida has
developed a set of standards that must be of quality, especially if the FCAT is
considered a “quality” assessment tool of those standards. Florida is simply
buying into Common Core standards on the advice of former governor Jeb Bush,
who has tremendous connections to Pearson Publishing. Changing the standards is
not necessary for Florida to provide a quality education to the state’s
students. The taxpayers’ dollars could be spent much more wisely.

Why would Florida reinvent the wheel if it’s
already reinventing the wheel?

     Florida is NOT reinventing any wheel. We
are simply being taken for a ride!

The merit pay is a fiasco.  I teach AP science, but my ‘merit pay’ is based on 10th grade FCAT reading scores.  I don’t teach 10th grade, and I don’t teach reading.  How is this even remotely fair to my personal evaluation?  I could have all my students getting a 5 on their AP Exam, but if students I don’t teach do poorly on an FCAT I will not receive merit pay and it will affect my evaluation.  Many other teachers are in similar situations, like kindergarten teachers being evaluated on 3rd grade scores.  Lawsuits have been filed to challenge this, and any reasonable person knows this is unfair and unethical.  Would you evaluate your dentist based on how many speeding tickets his patients get?

Nothing changes unless someone demands change. The use of FCAT (or other high stakes tests) is flawed and is part of a larger ed-reform-strategy that openly espouses erasing our current public educational system and replacing it with virtual schools, rooms of computers and facilitators, Charter Schools, and privatization through vouchers. Furthermore, the push to show that teachers are ineffective (through the use of test scores) is designed to reduce the number of long-term teachers, and the “pension drain” on states, and the power/existence of unions.

The fact that the “system” is based on a wrong provides even greater support for those who are demanding change.

Finally, for the record, Florida is not reinventing the wheel, for wheels move you forward, bring freedom and new horizons, and can be adapted to countless applications.  Instead, Florida is attaching square anchors on axles.  These “wheels” look nice, but fail to achieve their basic purpose.

I, for one, demand more.