FCAT Fever

During the coming weeks public school administrators, teachers, students and their parents will undergo their annual stress test known as the FCAT.

The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test is anything but.

School accountability is a valid exercise and any school district worth its salt would invite such scrutiny.

However, what the state created more than a decade ago has become the be all and end all of assessing schools.

Most of the school year, curriculum and focus is trained on the testing months of February and March and the results and grading months of May and June.

This is high-stakes testing, with school dollars in play beyond bragging rights and a touchstone of achievement.

The stakes became even higher for Gulf District Schools over the next four years given the tax bills voters handed themselves with last March’s one-mill operating levy referendum.

However, the state has never gotten this right, reflected in part by the changing of rules, scoring paradigms and subject matter that come nearly every year. Next year the test is overhauled completely.

But a district the size of Gulf County offers a microscope through which to see how feeble an attempt it is to try to squeeze what is occurring in the classroom across the state through the same prism to gain a comparative look.

How does a test capture a teacher who comes in at 5 a.m. each day to ensure readiness to engage her students?

How does a test capture a single mother providing an uncommon passion and touch to some of the most challenged students in the district?

How does a test assess the hands-on high school science teacher, the engagingly current government and history teacher, the teacher keeping arts alive in the schools or the teacher finding her calling after raising children of her own?

What snapshot can a test provide of the teachers who dedicate time outside the classroom to the success of their students, who spend weekday evenings on lesson plans, grading tests and homework assignments, who provide after-school tutoring?

In what way does a single test assess the mentoring and social work performed daily by so many for so many young people?

The state can label the FCAT an assessment test until the cows come home – comprehensive not so much.