9486 in the collection
FCAT Battering Florida Schools
by Paul A. Moore
The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test
(FCAT) is battering the state's public schools.
The test amounts to a weapon, an iron fist
concealed in a velvet glove, designed to
isolate and weaken inner-city schools as a
prelude to their takeover and shutdown. It is
an integral part of a strategic plan to strike
first at the most politically vulnerable
families and children; those besieged with
poverty and racism, and turn their schools into
the first dominoes to fall to a private profit-
making system. Be not deceived though; the last
page of this strategic plan celebrates the
complete destruction of public education
itself--all the schools from the F's to the
A's.
The FCAT strayed from its core mission in 2006.
Gov. Jeb Bush was leaving office and for the
sake of his political fortunes the test content
and scoring were grossly manipulated to reflect
learning gains that would boost him onto the
national stage as "the education governor". A
year later test scores crashed back to earth.
The number of "F-schools" quadrupled from 21 to
over 80 and the "D-schools" doubled to over
300. The scope of that poor result was too
broad to be of any use to the FCAT wrecking
crew and even forced the Florida Legislature
into a show debate of cosmetic changes to the
FCAT.
In 2008 the FCAT got back to the laser focus
for which it was created. Inner-city schools
around the state were singled out as the low
performing schools. The Florida Department of
Education (FDOE) used those FCAT results to
craft a plan to "intervene" in these schools.
The intervention is described in an absurdly
bureaucratic 132-frame power point presentation
titled, "Florida's Differentiated
Accountability Model". Although 1,081 of
Florida's 2,512 schools are on the FDOE hit-
list, the most serious intrusion and disruption
this year is intended for only thirteen. For
public consumption, the FDOE wants to "help"
these schools but page 117 of their strategic
plan points to their real objective. There
under the heading "Companies Expressing
Interest in Florida School Management" is
listed Academica, Community Education Partners,
Edison Schools, and School Turnaround. It's a
roster of the corporate vultures now standing
by to pick over the carcasses of the destroyed
schools.
The 13 public schools targeted by FDOE are all
in depressed communities. Children of color are
in the majority at each school and most of the
students apply for free and reduced price
meals. For instance, Larkdale Elementary in
Broward is 97% Black and 90% have made meal
applications, Mollie E. Ray Elementary in
Orlando is 91% Black and 92% have applied for
assistance, John F. Kennedy Middle School in
Riviera Beach is 91% Black and 80% have filed
applications.
Four schools in Miami-Dade are under explicit
FDOE threat. Holmes Elementary, Liberty City
Elementary, Miami Central High School, and
Miami Edison High School are all located in
Liberty City and Little Haiti, pockets of the
community's deepest poverty and the largest
Haitian immigrant population. The strident
position of the state is that each of these
schools will either rise to an FCAT based C-
grade this year or be closed.
The unprecedented rise in FCAT scores mandated
in the targeted schools is apparently to be
achieved by some form of magic. There will be
no significantly increased resources devoted to
the schools. Class size will not be reduced to
improve teacher/pupil ratios. None of the tried
and true measures to improve student
achievement are planned. Missionaries from the
FDOE will simply hover over the schools to
monitor the incessant testing of students and
to insure that teachers are busied collecting
mountains of useless data. The overseers will
hector for posted benchmarks, pacing guides,
and word walls until instruction is essentially
squeezed out of the classroom. Tedium will
reign supreme under the bureaucrat's regimen
and the children will learn only to hate
learning. Then In the spring the bitter fruits
will be spit up on the FCAT and the FDOE will
lament the failure of their best efforts but
that it's now time to give up on these children
and close their schools.
Based on a growing revulsion with the FCAT on
the local level there have been small scale
rebellions recently. These modest uprisings
have been met with strong-arm tactics and
intimidation from the FDOE. At an August
meeting of the Broward School Board the Smart
School Institute of Technology and Commerce
(SSITC) was kept open by a unanimous vote in
defiance of an order from the state to close
the inner-city charter for low FCAT scores. The
sentiment of the board was that SSITC was doing
a great job under trying circumstances and was
not fairly judged by test scores. The FDOE's
petulant response was to block the state's
share of the charter's funding and force the
school closed a month later.
In Miami-Dade the FDOE ordered that principals
in seven inner-city schools be involuntarily
transferred four weeks into the school year
regardless of the destabilizing effect. When
the proposed transfers came before Miami-Dade
County School Board they were voted down.
Miami-Dade was threatened with a $3 million
penalty by the state and at a hastily called
special meeting a week later the board reversed
itself.
In the end, if the FDOE manages to plow over
all opposition to its plan, what becomes of the
children and young people at the shuttered
schools? That remains to be seen. But the
Florida Legislature, while cutting the public
education budget by over $2 billion in its last
regular session, did manage to find $305
million to build three new prisons.
Paul A. Moore is a Miami-Dade County Public
School Teacher, Miami Carol City Senior High
— Paul A. Moore
Internet
2008-09-19
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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