FCAT: To Be or Not to Be Is the Question

A Florida freshman state legislator said Tuesday she is championing a bill in the House that would do away with the annual state exams. This is not the first time a bill has been introduced in the state legislature to end the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test -- and each attempt has failed.  However, Rep. Daphne Campbell is not deterred.

Campbell, a Democratic state representative from District 108, which includes North Miami, filed House Bill 71 in an effort to replace the FCAT with the High School Competency Test.  Campbell stated that, "There's too much pressure on parents, students and teachers and the FCAT is not helping.''  Campbell feels there needs to be an indepth look at the accountability system in Florida.

The controversial FCAT has been the topic of many places from the dinner table to the board rooms. Personally, I have no problem with students being assessed on content they should already know...or at least should have been taught.  However, I do have a problem with the policies derived as a result of the FCAT data.  I constant hear baraging The problem that educators have with the FCAT is not that it forces them to teach to the test; the problem they have is that it forces them to teach. 

While I agree that there should be some type of statewide standard, the FCAT has become the be-all and end-all of public education in Florida. Many very bright kids perform less than admirably on standardized tests, either because of differences in learning styles or due to the anxiety produced by knowing their academic success or failure hinges on ONE SINGLE TEST. Would we as adults like to have our careers judged by a single measurement taken once annually, without regard to daily productivity? I don't think so. As with many well-intentioned government mandated programs, the reality fails to live up to the expectation. And the bottom line is that our kids are not doing any better on the tests that matter when it comes to college admissions: the ACT and SAT.

The Legislature and Gov. Bush's logic for the  FCAT was to hold schools accountable for the taxpayer's money they spend. Let's apply that logic to everybody and make the state legislature and the governor take a test to insure that the taxpayer is getting their money's worth of learning and development out of them. Although I am not leading a "Death of the FCAT Crusade,"  I do not forsee the elimination of the FCAT.  There's as much chance of that happening as having a snow blizzard in Miami every day during the summer.