Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Big week arrives: It's FCAT time

From third-graders to sophomores, much rides on their performance for them and for their schools.

By DONNA WINCHESTER
Published March 7, 2005

This is FCAT week. For all schools and for many students, the stakes are high.

Pinellas high schools know they need to do better this year. Last year half of them got D's, and all but two were on a track to get D's this year.

The students' stakes? Third-graders need to pass the reading portion to move to fourth grade. Tenth-graders need to pass the test to graduate with a standard diploma when they are seniors.

With a weary awareness of all of this, Pinellas students have been answering practice questions and learning test-taking strategies for seven long months. They have attended special tutoring sessions and have listened to lectures about working to their highest potential.

Now, one day stands between them and the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

Today, more than 70,000 Pinellas third- through 10th-graders will go head to head with the FCAT. Next week, fifth-, eighth- and 11th-graders will take the Science FCAT.

As state and federal officials twist up the pressure for students to meet ever-rising expectations, schools in Pinellas have expended near Herculean efforts to make sure children are ready.

They also have resorted to other, more experimental measures: peppermints and bottled water, bananas, and "magic pencils."

Third- and 10th-graders, at what Pinellas district officials call "the gatekeeper years," keenly feel the heat, as do nearly all high schools. In addition to the schools that got D's, six high schools that received C's last year - Clearwater, Dunedin, Lakewood, Seminole, St. Petersburg and Tarpon Springs - could drop to D's this year if they once again fail to bring up the scores of their lowest-performing readers.

That's because the state's grading plan looks at the quarter of each school's students who did the worst on the reading portion of the FCAT. If half of those students fail to make reading gains within two years, a school's grade drops, even if the school's overall score would have earned a higher grade.

The district sent reading coaches to nearly all high schools this year to counteract the trend, said Jan Rouse, associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction. Additionally, three high schools were part of a 15-school pilot program that introduced a new assessment to determine if students were mastering the material measured by the FCAT.

Struggling children were given tailor-made "prescriptions" and were retested.

Several high schools, including Lakewood High, targeted their lowest-performing students and created special classes for them. Lakewood principal Fred Ulrich asked classroom teachers to stress the importance of the test and how each student's score affects the school as a whole.

At Gibbs High School, teachers attended faculty minimeetings where they discussed reading strategies they could introduce regardless of the subjects they teach. The students took practice tests in their homerooms, then spent time going over the answers. They were given materials to take home so they could practice on their own.

St. Petersburg High principal Julie Janssen determined which students were close to moving from one level to another and pulled them out of regular classes once a week. She found mentors for them and offered staff development sessions for their teachers.

Janssen was one of several principals who invited the district's language arts and mathematics supervisors to make presentations to the teachers on test-taking strategies. Like Ulrich, she encouraged teachers to make sure students understood the test's importance.

She also resorted to a few psychological measures. She ordered T-shirts in the school's colors for the students to wear on test days and enlisted the Spirit Team, a group of parents who act as the school's cheerleaders, to be on hand throughout the week.

Seminole High principal Rick Misenti used academic and psychological strategies to prepare his students for the coming weeks. Misenti, who said he became "physically ill" when he saw the school's grade go from a B to a C last year, pored over all the data until he identified the root of the problem.

"Our data showed that for the past five years, we had been lagging," Misenti said. "Of the 16 high schools, we had the lowest reading gains of our Level 1 and Level 2 kids. There was an urgency to do something, especially when we saw the brutal facts."

He created mandatory classes for the students who were struggling the most. He had a meeting with the parents of his lowest-performing students, and did a "by-the-numbers" presentation for his staff. Then he spoke to every class and held a schoolwide assembly to discuss what was at stake.

He was surprised to learn that some students didn't realize they had to pass both the reading and the math portions of the FCAT to graduate with a standard diploma.

After a "2-o'clock-in-the-morning" brainstorm about a month ago, he asked the school's newspaper adviser and student staff to create an eight-page special edition dedicated to FCAT preparation. Paid for by the School Advisory Council, the newspaper offered personal testimonials from students and strategies for parents to help their children.

Such grand gestures are rare, especially at the high school level, said Rouse, the curriculum superintendent.

"You will see at the elementary level some kinds of things that tug at your heart a little," she said. "The schools try their very best to create a comfortable environment where kids feel supported and secure."

At Mount Vernon Elementary, for example, a school that has raised its grade from a D to an A in the past four years, students were given special pencils imprinted with the slogan "Focus, concentrate and always try." They attended a pep rally on Friday featuring third-grade teacher Deena Rustemeyer as "Rappin' Rustemeyer" and got a visit from former principal Valerie White.

[Last modified March 7, 2005, 06:56:02]