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Beyond FCAT

Jim Davis has some sensible ideas for evaluating Florida's schools.

In his "Achieve Florida" education plan, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jim Davis doesn't aim to end standardized testing or abandon rating schools. Instead, he makes a reasonable call for better feedback to students and a more thorough way to hold schools accountable.

That such modest improvements are viewed as anathema to the Department of Education shows just how deeply politicized school reform has become. Gov. Jeb Bush, as if on cue, responded with extravagant umbrage: "Congressman Davis would prefer not to hold our schools accountable for student achievement and would rather sugarcoat their performance."

That isn't close to the truth. What Davis is actually seeking is to bring some precision to a system that uses the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test as though it can provide all the answers. The FCAT is valuable in determining how well students are progressing in math, reading and writing. But it alone can't identify which principals and teachers should be fired, which schools need to be shut down, which teachers deserve raises, and which third-graders should be promoted to fourth grade.

The test can absolutely help teachers and parents judge how well their students are performing. But right now the results don't come until after school is out each summer, and the students never see where they went wrong. Davis would try to make the results available earlier. "This," he writes, "will turn the FCAT into the diagnostic learning tool it was intended to be."

The formula now used to grade schools is still strongly biased toward schools with the highest achievers. That would make sense if the grades weren't used as a method to reward or punish teachers. But they are. Last year, for example, the Polk International Baccalaureate School, which enrolls only students with high test scores, got a bonus. The Quest Academy, an alternative high school in Sanford, did not.

Davis wants to take the $158-million in annual bonus money and distribute it more toward teachers that deserve or need it most. He calls for a broader assessment for each school, one that would include the FCAT but also such parameters as graduation rates, course difficulty, diversity of curriculum and more emphasis on learning gains.

Republican nominee Charlie Crist has let Bush do most of his speaking for him. Crist says he is willing to consider some minor changes to the FCAT approach, but his platform describes his "vision" as: "emulating Gov. Bush's high expectations, requirements for accountability." Will he also emulate Bush's intolerance for different ideas?

For rewards and punishments to spur schools to improve, they must be based on factors that teachers can control. The FCAT is an imperfect step in that direction, and even DOE has acknowledged that fewer than one in three teachers can be fairly evaluated that way. Davis is asking for a little common sense in a program that has suffered from entirely too much political dogma. While Republicans may mischaracterize it as a step backward, most educators and families would consider that a significant improvement.

[Last modified October 3, 2006, 23:33:26]