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Most parents agree some kind of testing is needed, but oppose tying funding to scores, saying it penalizes schools with low-income students.
By STEPHEN HEGARTY, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 4, 2002
In just five years, the FCAT has gone from oddball acronym to instantly recognizable four-letter word among Florida teachers, students and parents.
It has changed how teachers do their jobs and how parents view their schools. It even forced school districts to start the school year earlier to give students an early start preparing for the test. It's one reason Hillsborough and Pinellas schools start this week, a full two weeks earlier than in pre-FCAT days.
Now the test, and the school grades that are based on it, are among the top issues in the governor's race.
In more than two dozen recent interviews with parents in suburban, high-growth neighborhoods with solid-performing schools, the St. Petersburg Times found that they have intimate knowledge of the test and the school grading system. They have strong feelings, and their assessments are nuanced and often complicated.
There is much they don't like: the pressure, the narrowing of the curriculum, the teaching to the test.
But their views are more complex than that.
While some hate the FCAT, parents are nearly unanimous that some kind of test is necessary. What they want actually sounds a lot like the FCAT.
Many of these parents loathe the idea of using the test to grade schools. Yet they still want a simple, concise way to size up their own school and compare it to the school across town.
If there's any one issue on which most parents agree, it is tying money to school grades. They don't like it. Even parents at high-achieving schools, which get tens of thousands of additional dollars, squirm at the system and say it is unfair to schools full of poor kids who tend to struggle with FCAT.
These are not the objections of parents whose schools are failing. These are the winners complaining about the rules and outcome of the game.
Given those strong feelings, it's no surprise that the Democratic challengers hoping to unseat Gov. Jeb Bush are promising to change the state's school accountability system. They want to tap into that parental dissatisfaction.
But the candidates are still vague about what their system would look like.
Parents and the Democratic candidates seem to have arrived at the conclusion reached by June Wiaz of Tallahassee, whose two daughters and their school have excelled under FCAT.
"Okay, we hate it," June Wiaz said. "Now what's the alternative?"
"People say they don't like the test, but we've always had tests," said New Tampa mom Linda Wickersham. She had a first- and second-grader at the A-rated Hunter's Green Elementary last school year.
Janet Johnson, sitting nearby, responded with a common complaint.
"I think they teach to the test," Johnson said. "Because of all the pressure, they teach to the test."
"That doesn't bother me, if they're testing the right things," Wickersham responded.
"But don't you wonder," Johnson said, "is it a test to benefit my child or to benefit the school's finances?"
In the suburbs where schools have solid reputations and enviable school grades, parents might be expected to embrace the state's school accountability system. They like the A grade. It mirrors their own sense of how the school is doing.
But many still are uncomfortable with the idea of grading a school. They resist buying into the system, but it's hard sometimes.
Carol Shirkey's daughter attends A-rated Sealey Elementary School in Tallahassee.
"It is a good school, but does that A really mean anything?" Shirkey asked. "Would I be happy sending her there if it was a D? I don't think it matters. But . . . I don't know."
Parents whose children attend highly rated schools feel a bit guilty about getting extra state money for that A grade.
Not that they're turning it down. Last year, Hunter's Green Elementary got $79,891 as a reward for scoring an A.
In Pinellas County, Ira Sansolo's daughters both did well on the FCAT. Their schools -- last year, one attended Leila Davis Elementary in Clearwater, one attended Safety Harbor Middle School -- did well and will benefit financially because of their good school grades.
So what doesn't Sansolo like?
"Grades. That's where the pressure is," Sansolo said in a discussion with other Leila Davis Elementary parents. "If you told the kids, "Here, take this test. We just want to see how you're doing.' That's one thing. But the grades add all this pressure. It changes everything."
Sansolo, a Democrat, made it clear he plans to vote for one of Bush's challengers.
Dinah Majure is an undecided Republican. She is not entirely kidding when she says her friends might frown at her views on testing and the governor's race.
She knows kids should be tested. She approves of accountability. But she wonders if "maybe we've gone too far. The testing has just gotten so . . . emphasized."
Majure recalls that at church just before the testing season, "some boys were asking for prayer requests because they were about to take the reading test. I worry about that pressure."
Donna Bell recalled when her son was a fourth-grader at Leila Davis Elementary last year, a grade level that at the time was instrumental to his school's letter grade.
"My son and his classmates got letters of encouragement from kids in other grades," Bell recalled. " "We know you'll do well for our school.' That sort of thing. I know they meant well, but that's too much."
Bell agrees that maybe it's not so much the test, but the resulting grade, that creates the pressure.
"Americans seem to have a predilection for quantifying," said Gloria Pipkin of Lynn Haven, near Panama City. "Reducing a school to a grade seems to have some appeal."
Pipkin is no fan of the governor's plan. She is the coordinator of Florida Coalition for Assessment Reform, a statewide anti-FCAT group. She believes Bush's A+
Plan is harmful to schools and built on the flawed FCAT. Pipkin has organized rallies against the test and the accountability system. People showed up with "Spay the FCAT" signs.
But she is the first to acknowledge there isn't much of a backlash against the test compared to New York, where scores of parents protest standardized tests by keeping their kids out of school on test day.
In Florida, even after a new round of F schools caused consternation around the state and reintroduced vouchers to the debate, there's dissatisfaction and frustration, not angry revolution.
"I would like somebody to take a strong stand on that," said Jamie Smith of Tallahassee, who has two school-age children. "For me, if one of the Democratic candidates takes the right stand, and really says something, I would be interested."
She added: "I'm waiting."
Every poll shows education is the No. 1 issue in the governor's race.
One of the key battlegrounds will be the state's high-growth suburban areas, home to the vaunted soccer moms. These are areas where parents vote, and they tend to vote Republican. But pollsters say these areas are very much in play in the general election.
"Every suburban precinct with a high concentration of parents with school-age children is absolutely up for grabs in this election," said Rob Schroth, the pollster hired by the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald to survey voters this year.
But for a Democrat to beat Bush on education, "they will have to propose something bold, something voters immediately recognize will improve their child's education," Schroth said.
Over the summer, with FCAT scores, school grades and vouchers making headlines, Bush went on the offensive.
"A lot of people think that this is not a winning issue for me. They're wrong," Bush said during a recent speech. "I'm not going to apologize for grading schools."
The Florida Republican Party recently aired a pro-Bush television ad that accused his challengers of failing to take a strong stand on school accountability. "On grading schools?" the voice-over says, "Neither will take a stand."
That prodded the challengers to try to clarify their positions.
Democrat Bill McBride has proposed an education plan that calls for ending Bush's school grading system.
McBride, a Tampa lawyer, would add variables to the mix: Graduation rates. Mobility rates. Parent satisfaction. Class size. Poverty among children. Experience among teachers.
Many of those factors already are available to parents on the Florida Department of Education Web site at http://info.doe.state.fl.us/fsir.
Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno has offered few specifics. But she, too, favors adding more variables such as school attendance rates and the percentage of graduates going to college.
The idea is to give a more complete, balanced picture of what goes on in a school.
The approach recalls Bush's first attempt at grading schools. The early system included rates of absenteeism, suspensions and dropout rates. Those factors were eliminated, largely at the request of educators. Discipline-conscious principals didn't want a high suspension rate to hurt their school grade.
Democrat Daryl Jones of Miami, the only candidate with a record of opposing Bush's plan while in the Florida Legislature, has a lot to say about how the A-through-F grades have hurt schools. He wants to focus more on how Florida's schools compare to schools around the nation.
All three candidates agree that they would end Bush's practice of steering millions of dollars to the high performing schools as a reward for good grades. Instead they would devote more money to the struggling schools.
Ultimately though, Reno, McBride and Jones are not ready to stop assessing schools in some way -- a practice that is now required by federal law.
Says Jones, a former Air Force fighter pilot: "Every unit in the Air Force has an evaluation. Everyone knows where they stand. That's not a problem to me."
Says Reno: "I don't know that it would be possible to eliminate the school grade all together, and still evaluate the students."
McBride resists the A-through-F ratings, saying: "This isn't supposed to be a winners-losers thing." But when asked what a workable alternative would look like, McBride said: "Don't know yet."
Ira Sansolo of Pinellas County listens to his daughters talking about test-taking time at school. What he hears is a variation on some of the chief complaints against the test and the accountability system.
Some complain the system pushes aside all else.
During FCAT week, Mara, 14, missed out on band practice, a regular class. Instead of playing their instruments, the students watched videos -- My Side of the Mountain and Beethoven Lives Upstairs.
"They didn't want us making any noise," she said.
"These are the other consequences of high-stakes testing," said David Miner, a Manatee County parent with two children in public schools. Miner, a Republican who supports the governor, is running for the state House and talking as much as he can about overhauling Bush's school accountability system.
"When you provide incentives to do certain things," Miner said, "don't be surprised that people do those things and shortchange other things, like music and poetry and foreign languages."
Sansolo said he has begun to miss the old standardized tests his daughters used to take before FCAT subsumed them.
"There was less pressure," Sansolo said. "It told you how they're doing in school. Perfect."
But statewide testing and accountability is the law of the land.
The new federal No Child Left Behind Act requires statewide testing and some method for rooting out low-performing schools.
It's up to states to define those methods, and Florida and a handful of other states already have done so. But all the other states will need to devise a system for testing students and evaluating schools.
That means those states will have to go through the same debates that still are going on in Florida, among gubernatorial candidates and among parents.