Opinion: FCAT has sent our schools into test-driven lunacy

As I prepare my students for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, I think of all those legislators and our governor who daily espouse their compassion for kids, when what I see in front of me is test-driven lunacy. Simply put, policymakers are dead wrong to think FCAT is good for our kids or their education.

The entire thrust of the governor's "A-plus Plan" is the FCAT. Yet how can one judge schools, teachers and students by a single test? If we held our legislators accountable under similar conditions, they'd fail miserably. The reality is that standardized tests do not measure academic ability, but only ability on a particular test. As such, don't blame teachers who "teach the test," especially when parents and politicians hold this score as the only measure of their worth.

If teaching the test is going on in a lot of classrooms, you can bet teachers are doing so by neglecting what brought them to the profession. In my classroom, rather than teaching students to love and cherish literature, I'm covering standardized test skills. This is not why I became a teacher, yet I can't ignore it, because I'd be hurting students who want a diploma. What is more, school funding is dependent on these scores, so I'd be hurting my co-workers and the school as a whole. Consequently, veteran teachers who love their subjects are losing their desire to teach, while future teachers are changing majors while there's still time. I wish policymakers good luck in attracting the 160,000 new teachers Florida will need in the future.

But don't feel sorry for teachers. Rather, feel sorry for students who will endure eight hours of testing this week. Feel sorry for kids who, under revised testing guidelines, can't read a book or do anything productive once they've finished, but must sit quietly until time has expired. What is more, feel sorry for those students who won't pass, who'll endure the humiliation of failure, who'll have to do it all again, and who won't be allowed to take elective courses next year because they'll be scheduled into classes to -- you guessed it -- work on the FCAT.

I wish I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, but with the coming of the science FCAT, things will get worse. At my school, where funding was already cut despite an "A" grade, we will probably lose staff and see our class sizes go up because of the budget. Next year, when school grades fall across the state, you can count on politicians using this as proof of what they've been saying all along -- public schools are lousy. I won't be listening, of course, because I, like many of my devoted colleagues, will be too busy preparing my students for FCAT.
-- Marlow Matherne, Tallahassee

Florida is failing on school size

In Large schools try to think small, (Feb. 24) it states that Florida schools approach twice the national average in size at all grade levels, and are still far worse than even the second-place state in this dubious category. Research shows that smaller schools are "better." Administrators and elected officials around the state seem to be agreeing with Graydon Howe, director of plant operations in Hernando County, who said, in response to the idea of moving toward smaller schools, that it flies "in the face of every economic concern you can imagine."

I see no reason for this. What is Florida failing to do that all other 49 states manage to do, and many of them quite a lot better? Do we need to trim other areas of the state budget so as to be able to afford these improvements? Do we need a stronger tax base? I'm not commenting on John McKay's tax plan, but something appears to need changing!

In the same paper, Gov. Jeb Bush responds to the notion that the primary "criterion needed to gauge the excellence of our public education system is how much money we spend on it" by saying that this "is not only false, but foolish." It seems to me that this is one area where money spent is directly responsible for an improvement in education. I do not want my elected officials and their appointees making excuses.
-- Dan Chesnut, St. Petersburg

Reading skill begins at home

Re: Bush's reading plan: retrain teachers, Feb. 27.

In an effort to get every student reading at grade level within 10 years, Gov. Jeb Bush wants to spend millions retraining teachers. It isn't teachers' fault that kids can't read up to par. Becoming a successful reader involves a solid foundation. That foundation should come from the home.

Unfortunately, in today's society, that foundation isn't always there. Perhaps that money could be better spent educating parents that they need to spend time reading to their young children and making sure their homework is done correctly every night.
-- John F. Marretta, Port Richey

Voucher schools' inadequacies

Thank you for publishing Barbara Miner's excellent Feb. 25 piece Voucher schools' unaccountability. It brings to light important information that is suppressed because of sensitivity to private schools and to cold facts regarding them that may easily be overlooked by parents and teachers.

Miner cites three voucher programs that provide public tax dollars to private religious schools -- Milwaukee, Cleveland and Florida. "The U.S. Supreme Court is taking up the Cleveland case, where 99 percent of the students using vouchers attend religious schools," she says.

Miner exposes the voucher trap overlooked because of lack of news coverage on voucher schools' academic inadequacy. All of us need to be informed about parochial education inadequacies, too often suppressed because of religious sensitivity. As Miner states, "Voucher schools, by their very nature, are private schools not accountable to society at large."

This is a serious omission. It could mean educational inadequacy in many areas of the country. It is reminiscent of George Seldes' exposes of news called In Fact, in which falsehoods in media were wholesomely exposed. My journal, The Churchman (later called The Human Quest) ran many of Seldes' articles, among them those titled "Falsehoods of the Spanish War" and "Catholic Spain's Suppressed News." Seldes' articles were dedicated to truth. It was a privilege to run them as an antidote to inadequate and false reporting.
-- Edna Ruth Johnson, editor emeritus, The Human Quest, St. Petersburg

Accountability is a weak argument

Re: Voucher schools' unaccountability.

There is something troubling about Barbara Miner's argument that voucher schools need greater accountability. She states that public schools have good accountability, yet "public schools need drastic improvement." If "accountability" works, why are public schools in such bad shape?

I'm afraid Miner uses the term "accountability" when she really means "politically inspired micromanagement." And it is this micromanagement and inability to delegate decisionmaking to the school level that results in fiscal waste and poor student performance. Accountability is the weakest argument public schools can mount because public schools have no accountability to parents and students, who are the true consumers of their product. In private schools, parents can vote with their children's feet. That is true accountability.

Here are a couple of ideas for Miner if she wishes to increase true accountability. Why doesn't she sponsor legislation requiring all schools -- public and private -- to take the same achievement tests and publish the results in one report so that parents can judge which schools are most successful? And Miner might also add legislation requiring all public school teachers to send their own kids to public schools. Then we'll see who really supports accountability!
-- Mack R. Hicks, Ph.D., chairperson, Partnership for Educational Fairness, Pinellas Park

Telecom bill good for consumers

Your Feb. 22 editorial Broadband captives paints a disturbingly misleading picture of the current broadband market and the proposals in the bipartisan Tauzin-Dingell bill.

First, your prediction that companies like Verizon or Bell South will monopolize the broadband market if Tauzin-Dingell passes is flat-out wrong. The bill itself requires the large telecom companies, uniquely in the broadband marketplace, to continue to make our network available to other Internet service providers as we do for more than 400 ISPs today. Cable TV companies are not required to provide such access, nor do they.

Your editorial ignores the fact that cable companies dominate today's broadband market, controlling nearly 70 percent of broadband customers -- a 2 to 1 advantage over the telephone companies. One reason that Tauzin-Dingell is needed is precisely that cable companies have such a strong position in the market while being completely unregulated. Verizon is subject to a blizzard of restrictions and entanglements that tilt the regulatory environment sharply in favor of cable. Tauzin-Dingell would help level the playing field and provide needed competitive balance to the giant cable companies.

Second, your contention that Tauzin-Dingell will "gut" the competitive provisions of the 1996 Telecom Act is also false. Tauzin-Dingell will have absolutely no impact on rules that require Verizon to open its telephone networks to rivals who want to compete in the local phone market.

Third, your argument that Verizon has "successfully resisted competition" doesn't hold up. As of 2001, there were 35 competitors offering local phone service in the Tampa Bay area alone and 463 in Florida. Each and every Verizon central office -- more than 80 in all -- is host to at least one competitor offering local service, in full accordance with the 1996 Telecom Act.

The Tauzin-Dingell bill would create an incentive for investment in broadband expansion by Verizon that current regulations inhibit. This investment would reap tremendous consumer benefits on both a local and a national scale. One study published by Brookings Institution economist Robert W. Crandall and engineering consultant Charles L. Jackson projects that an acceleration of widespread broadband development and subsequent use could benefit U.S. consumers and producers by as much as $500-billion.

It's time for some new rules that fit new technologies. It's time for a national broadband policy that allows all high-speed Internet providers the ability to compete freely and fairly. The Tauzin-Dingell bill, along with the FCC's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, are major steps toward that policy's creation and a new era of consumer choice and broadband investment.
-- John P. Blanchard, president, Southeast region, Verizon Communications, Tampa

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