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Some questions you can't answer by
filling in an oval
By Marion Brady
May 31, 2007
Re: "Where to for the FCAT and accountability?" (My View, May 24).
Jim Warford, executive director of the Florida Association of School
Administrators, made an important point in his recent column. The real FCAT
issue isn't about accountability. All educators believe in it. Always have.
Always will. It isn't being held accountable that frustrates them, but the
FCAT's superficial, simplistic approach to it.
A source of even greater frustration for many is the degree to which the
standardized testing fad has shut down dialogue on education-related questions
of great importance, questions bearing directly on student performance and
societal well-being.
Here are some of those questions:
The present thrust of education "reform" assumes the familiar curriculum, now
locked in place by "standards and accountability," is as appropriate today as it
was when it was adopted in 1892. Is it?
If there are problems with the traditional, same-thing-for-everybody curriculum,
won't "raising the bar" make the problems worse?
The FCAT is part of a reform movement that assumes market forces can shape
schools up. At least one Florida legislator is even considering introducing
legislation to pay students for passing scores. Does this mean that learning is
unnatural and won't happen unless teachers and kids are threatened or bribed?
Management experts say poor institutional performance almost always indicates
unaddressed "system" problems. Poor FCAT scores aren't being blamed on the
system but on the people in the system. Are the experts wrong?
The FCAT is rapidly pushing "frills" out of the curriculum. Has research now
established that art, music, physical activity and so on have nothing to do with
developing reasoning ability?
On critical, instruction-related questions, local educators and school boards
are increasingly being pushed out of the decision-making loop. Does the history
of top-down, centralized control suggest this change in strategy works?
Statewide, thousands of kids are being held back because of poor reading and
math scores. Is the ability to interpret symbols and fill in ovals on
multiple-choice tests the only way kids learn, and therefore sufficient reason
to flunk them?
Education is supposed to teach kids to think for themselves, not just recall
what they've been ordered to remember. Are corporately produced, machine-scored
tests able to judge the relative quality of complex thought processes?
Will manipulating the curriculum to "maintain America's competitive position in
world trade" be more likely to ensure America's future well-being than helping
kids love learning because it lets them pursue their abilities wherever they
lead?
Frantic to avoid the test-triggered "failing" label, educators use myriad
strategies to "game" the system. For example, administrators, knowing ahead of
time which kids will and which likely won't pass the FCAT, ignore them and flood
the "marginals" with attention. Is it possible to track and counter all such
score-distorting strategies?
If, as Acting Commissioner of Education Jeanine Blomberg says, state officials
"will go back and re-equate and rescale the 2006 third-grade FCAT reading exam,"
isn't this an admission of how open the scoring process is to political
manipulation?
The FCAT's defenders insist that it's legitimate because it's tied to the
Sunshine State Standards. Those "standards" have no overarching aim, fail to
capitalize on the mutually supportive nature of school subjects, and emphasize
knowledge rather than what kids can actually do with what they know. Aren't
these problems sufficiently serious to warrant a fresh look at the standards?
Back in the 1980s, before the leaders of business and industry and the
politicians hijacked education reform, thoughtful educators were beginning to
explore ways to move student intellectual performance to a whole new level. The
keys were World War II-developed General Systems Theory and research into how
the brain organizes information. The No Child Left Behind legislation stopped
that effort dead in its tracks.
The new model for education reform is the 19th-century classroom of Charles
Dickens' "Mr. Gradgrind." Future generations will look back on this era and
shake their heads in disbelief at the educational naivete of the amateurs now
writing education policy.
*Originally published on the FCAR Speakout Blog and then in the Tallahassee
Democrat. Published here by
permission of the author.
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