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Tackling the big tests: FCAT
The pressure-packed FCAT isn't the right answer for grading students and teachers.
By NICK LINGUANTI
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 2, 2001
[Times art: Rossie Newson]
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Although all of these requests are heard throughout the academic year, if you attend public school chances are these phrases are really ringing in your ears right now because you are recovering from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
As an eighth-grader who recently took these tests, I have lots of opinions about how such standardized testing affects students, teachers and schools.
The FCAT scores are used to measure student reading and math performance in comparison with state and national results. Students and their parents receive a scale score, national percentile rank, stanine and content scores. This printout is important to students because the scores in seventh grade can determine your application and acceptance to high school magnet programs in the future. Programs such as the International Baccalaureate and Center for Advanced Technologies only accept student applications with high stanine scores. This emphasis can be especially crucial to those students who make good grades but don't test well.
Many of us students are sick of all of this testing! While our teachers are doing a great job preparing us for these tests, we don't have the opportunity to do normal, fun class activities. We have been prepped since the start of school by taking practice tests that get us used to the FCAT format. It seems to take up so much class time, when there are other things we should be allowed to experience and learn about. I thought schools were designed to prepare us for life and our futures.
I am so much more than a score on a piece of paper! Many students whom I have discussed this with say they feel the same way. Where is the measurement of imagination? Creativity? Group dynamics? These are all things students need in order to be prepared for the future, yet these are not tested by the FCAT.
There are more ways to show what you know than simply blackening in a small oval on a piece of paper and having a machine scan it and spit out your scores. Many of my friends experience a great deal of stress from all the pressure to succeed on standardized tests. Headaches, anxiety attacks and stomach problems are just a few of the symptoms that plague students during testing.
Why can't there be a more balanced way to measure and evaluate the whole student and his or her capabilities and talents? I have several friends who are straight A students and achieve only average scores on this type of test. Is this fair to them?
This type of testing affects not only the student but also the teacher. In addition to teaching the regular curriculum, teachers have the extra work of practice tests and exercises to prepare their students to take the FCAT. There is little time for creative projects or class field trips, such as in Pinellas County this year, where schools canceled field trips to the St. Petersburg International Folk Fair Society festival because it coincided with test preparation the week before the FCAT was administered.
Under the state system, a school's grade and therefore the money it and its teachers receive are tied to test scores, which makes teachers feel more pressure than ever to make sure students receive higher scores. This seems so unfair to me. I have the greatest teachers who work hard to prepare us for success. To have their own successes measured by a little black oval seems grossly negligent. Some students are great at taking tests. Some are not. Teachers should not be penalized for this, especially when some students are trying to do their best. Testing is just one way to measure what a student knows. My teachers refer to learning styles that individualize the way we learn. All of us do not learn the same way, so it is easy to see why our testing styles should be different also.
Just because a school's grade might drop a letter does not mean my teachers are not working hard and that students are not trying their best. It simply means that the scores may not have increased over the year before.
There has to be a better way to evaluate students. Putting more pressure on them is not the answer. Finding other methods for students to show what they have learned is a must; tailoring the measuring device to students' learning styles is one suggestion.
If standardized testing is so stressful for students now, I can only imagine what it will be like for my kids when they are in school. Politicians should ask more kids how they feel about the FCAT.
Nick Linguanti, 13, is in the eighth grade at Southside Fundamental Middle School in St. Petersburg.
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