Opinion: From maverick to marginal

Mary Russell is a mother and teacher who believes Florida's high-stakes standardized testing is wrong for children and wrong for schools. But she is also a Pinellas School Board member, which makes her decision to have her children skip the FCAT indefensible.

Russell is right about the test. The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test is being used in the wrong way. The state takes the results from that one test as the sole measure of how well a school is performing and how well its teachers are teaching, and then punishes and rewards schools as a result. The state also tells seniors they can't graduate and third-graders they likely won't be promoted without a passing FCAT score, as though the rest of their schoolwork is just for practice.

So, Russell's anger is understandable, but her response is not. She says she is not encouraging other families to boycott the test, but that's precisely the effect of her action. She is, at some level, using her children to make a political point, which invites others to do the same. Her two sons are honor students, and their missing the test is not likely to adversely affect their education (though her third-grader will have to demonstrate reading proficiency through an alternative means to be promoted). But if more students follow her example, schools will suffer. Under the state's grading system, a school in which less than 90 percent of the students take the test is awarded an F.

Russell is new to the School Board, having used a feisty campaign in November to defeat a well-financed incumbent. Part of her appeal to voters may have been that she was a maverick and dared to challenge past decisions about choice student assignment and the governor's A+

Plan. But, as a board member, she will find that defiance has limited value. To be effective as a board member, she will need to do her homework and find ways to build consensus for change.

As an elected school official in one of Florida's largest school districts, Russell is now in a position to have her voice more clearly heard. She can lean more heavily on lawmakers, and even the governor, to urge them to use FCAT in a more educationally appropriate way. Toward that end, her FCAT boycott is viewed as a stunt, and tends only to marginalize her.

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