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Criminal Charges for Telling Students to 'Check Your Answers' On FCAT


. . .Harriet Parets, accused of improper conduct during the dreaded FCAT exams. . .

This wasn't a case of outright cheating, more like a blurry gray line that might have been crossed. She didn't provide answers, merely told students to double-check for wrong ones.

Firing Parets seems neither fair nor just, the equivalent of a career death penalty for jaywalking.

But because it involves the all-powerful FCAT, everything is exaggerated, including the overreaction on the part of quivering, cover-your-back bureaucrats.

"They want to make a scapegoat out of me," Parets said.

Thankfully, the School Board picked up on the nuances and didn't simply rubber-stamp Superintendent Frank Till's desire to proceed down the road to removal. They threw on the brakes with a 30-day deferral, giving everyone time to mull it over. . . .

Parets, 59, has taught in Broward for eight years. She describes the past seven months as "hell," ever since she got removed from her class at McNab Elementary.

"You're isolated," said Parets, who has been assigned to a media lab pending the outcome.

She has serious misgivings about the FCAT, the way it dominates lives of students, teachers and administrators. And she says her case illustrates how skewed things have become. All it took was a misunderstanding among a few 9-year-olds at the end of a long testing session to throw a class, a school and a teacher's life out of whack.

She said all she did was tell students to "recheck their work, because everyone always has some wrong answers when a test is taken." She said she was trying to keep kids involved and aware for the entire testing period, just as her principal had instructed in a memo. But some kids apparently thought she was specifically referring to them. And School Board investigators started splitting hairs over whether she violated the spirit or letter of FCAT instructions.

Some people seemed more concerned about losing 25 test results and its impact on McNab's grade than losing a teacher. (You'd think the disputed tests would be kept and scored to see if the results varied wildly from other classes, bolstering or undercutting the cheating claim. But that would make too much sense.)

And even though a 14-person investigative committee initially called for a reprimand, Melita pressed for termination mainly for appearance's sake.

Because this is an FCAT matter, the state gets involved. Parets potentially faces misdemeanor criminal charges and a revocation of her state license.

"I didn't want the state revoking her license after we had only given her a reprimand," Melita said.

In other words, forget what's right, as long as there's no future embarrassment. The message: In FCAT matters, everything's a firing offense.

"They want to set an example," Parets said. So why does she want to work for these people, in these conditions, for $41,000 a year?

"Because I love teaching," she said.

Masochist.

— Michael Mayo
Teacher's FCAT case scores one for overreaction
Sun Sentinel
10/3/002


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