For sick kids, FCAT's just one more exam
Illness and injury won't keep students from taking the state's standardized test. Even if they can't hold their No. 2 pencil.
By LANE DeGREGORY
Published February 10, 2005
TAMPA - Shuffling slowly, dragging his right leg, the boy made his way into a small classroom on the hospital's fifth floor.
"You got one of those gripper things, Mr. Gary?" asked the boy, easing into a chair. He lifted his numb right arm, deposited it on the desk.
"I mean, I'm ready for this test and all," he said. "I'm not worried about that."
He was afraid he wouldn't be able to hold the pencil.
George Purvis Jr., 15, is a sophomore at Armwood High in Brandon. In October, the forks on his BMX bike collapsed as he raced up a ramp. He crashed head-first, crushing three vertebrae in his neck. Doctors told him he might never walk again. He couldn't sit up. He had to wear a diaper.
But he's still a Florida schoolkid. So on Wednesday, he had to grasp a No. 2 pencil and fill in 54 bubbles on a test paper. He had to ignore the violent spasms in his back, bend over a Formica table at Tampa General Hospital and scratch out an essay with his weakened left hand.
Never mind that he almost died. George still had to take the FCAT, just like every other 10th-grader.
Most kids took the writing part of the test this week in their classrooms. But many others suffered through it in grimmer settings - in rehab centers, in hospitals, in sickrooms at home.
Each year, many sick and injured kids take the FCAT: kids on dialysis; kids in body casts; kids with heart transplants, new bone marrow, broken necks; kids with sickle cell anemia; kids crippled by burns; kids with cancer, hooked to chemo drips.
"Even though a child is ill, or has been in an accident, we try to help them keep up with their schoolwork," said Victoria Littlejohn, who heads the Hillsborough schools' hospital-homebound program. "We encourage students, if they are at all able, to go ahead and take the FCAT on the state's specific date."
If a student can't write, he or she takes the test by dictation. If a kid can't read because of an injury, a teacher reads the questions aloud. When a student misses the test for any reason, he or she has to wait another year to take it.
Only children with very recent injuries - or terminal illnesses - are exempt.
In Hillsborough, more than 500 children are schooled in hospitals or by homebound teachers each year. In Pasco, homebound teachers are now helping 170 students who are sick or injured. Pinellas County's hospital-homebound program serves 600 students a year, an average of 250 at any given time, program head Donna Hulbert says.
"If a child is out more than two weeks due to illness or injury, we can send a teacher to help," she said. "A lot of people don't know the public schools provide these services. There are programs like this in every county." All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg has its own teacher.
Tampa General has two full-time teachers, employees of the Hillsborough schools. Together, they teach an average of 40 students at a time - some strapped to dialysis machines; some writhing in the burn unit; some, like George, who can be wheeled into the tiny classroom, or limp there.
George's teacher, Gary Lundgren, works with the high school students. He has been at the hospital school since it started in 1990. He has worked with more than 500 patients, teaching some chronically ill kids for years. He meets students in intensive care, works with them through surgeries and rehab, follows them home, if necessary. Then he helps them get back to school.
"The hospital is such a scary place," Lundgren said. "If I come in and say, "Okay, Dude: It's time for math,' that gives a kid the idea, "Hey, maybe I'll survive this.' It gives him hope things might get back to normal."
Lundgren meets with each student for 90 minutes at a time, three days a week. He teaches almost everything: algebra, literature, economics. He assigns homework, grades tests, gives final exams, and, of course, makes sure everyone takes the FCAT.
He doesn't push parents to make their kids take the test. He doesn't need to. Most parents want to keep their kids learning. In the past 15 years, Lundgren said, only three families have told him to back off.
"We have kids that are extremely fragile medically. We have some kids ... who are indeed fighting for their lives," says Pete Kennedy, Pasco County's interim director of exceptional student education. "The fact that they have a teacher coming to them ... if we didn't have that, that would be the same as telling the child that we have given up.
"And that," Kennedy said, "would be crueller than the medical condition they're fighting."
George Purvis' short, dark hair is shorn like thick grass. The shadow of a moustache creeps across his upper lip.
He has made remarkable strides since his accident. He ditched the diaper and, last week, the wheelchair. But he still stumbles in the shower. His dad has to tie his shoes. It will be six weeks before he can return to his buddies at Armwood.
On Wednesday at Tampa General, his pencil kept slipping. George couldn't curl his fingers tightly enough to hold it.
"What if I put tape around it?" Lundgren asked, rifling through a basket on his desk. "That might help hold it."
Round and round he wound the Scotch tape, building a pad two inches long and an inch thick. George took the pencil and tenderly placed it on the white sheet. Slowly, shaky block letters began to appear.
"I ... CAN ... DO ... IT!" He shoved the paper back to his teacher and grinned.
When it was time to write the required essay, George told his teacher, "I hope the topic isn't dumb." He would have 45 minutes to scribble out something he hoped would be legible.
He wrote and rested, wrote and rested. After 30 minutes he let the pencil fall to the table, dropped his head against his dead arm. A red scar starts beneath his hair, snakes down his neck and disappears into his black T-shirt. It's the door the doctor had to open to save his spinal cord.
"Almost done?" Lundgren said, standing to stretch.
"Close," George said wearily. "But it's messy. I can't erase." He couldn't press the rubber hard enough. It was frustrating. He couldn't even scribble hard enough to scratch stuff out.
Finally, George closed his answer book. He had scrawled a page and a half. The topic was, indeed, dumb. But he answered it anyway. Premise, supporting statement, conclusion.
"No worries," George said, heading off to therapy. There, someone would massage his hands, someone else would watch him walk, and he would squeeze a ball, put pegs in holes and try not to grimace.
"I'll see you Friday," he called to his teacher. "I'm glad that's over with."
"It's not," Lundgren said. "That was just the beginning."
In a couple of weeks, George and all the other patients - almost every student in Florida - will be back bubbling ovals. Math and language arts are next.
Times staff writer Mike Wilson contributed to this report.