FCAT...A Eulogy

It is with great sorrow and a heavy heart that I am here today to speak in remembrance of a wonderful and esteemed examination, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.  FCAT, since 1998, you have graciously provided a fair and effective method for measuring our student’s mastery of the NGSSS standards.  Students, parents, and teachers from every corner of the state have adored you for many years, and their sadness in your passing has been overwhelming. 

Okay…who am I kidding here? Let’s be real.  FCAT, I believe that I can speak for every parent, every student, and every school staff member in the great state of Florida when I say…GOOD RIDDANCE, HALLELUJAH, and IT’S ABOUT TIME! I don’t know whether I should perform an interpretive dance to “Celebration” by Kool & The Gang while adorning my classroom with balloons and streamers, or sing songs of happiness in the school parking lot as I wave a sign back and forth expressing what I really think about you.  The thought that I never have to utter your name again to my poor, unfortunate students fills me with such joy that it’s impossible for me to express with words.  I know that you will most likely be replaced with a test that is equally if not more smothering than you are, but let’s just focus on the present right now…you are officially gone.  On a more serious note, the purpose of this eulogy is not to make jokes, or to list your many accomplishments and achievements (are there any?).  The purpose of this eulogy is to remember and reflect upon the definitive and lasting impression that you’ve made on myself, and on us all.   

Where do I even begin? One of the things that you will be remembered most for is placing fear, stress, and disdain into the hearts and minds of our children.  The fact that a third grader knows that their grade advancement depends on their performance on one test, on one day, is so disheartening.  We should be teaching our children to love and cherish learning, and you have done a wonderful job of smashing that belief into a million pieces like broken glass.  I know that all of the state leaders, and politicians somehow decided that you were the right choice to measure student performance, which blows my mind considering that the majority of them haven’t stepped foot in a public classroom since high school, but they aren’t the ones who’ve had to stand there year after year watching the frustrated and defeated looks on their kid’s faces when they realize they hadn’t passed…again.  They aren’t the ones who have waded through grueling practice tests with students as they try to answer questions that encourage you to find the “best answer,” and not the “right answer.”  You’re such a jokester, FCAT! You’ll always be remembered for your many, many questions that didn’t make any sense and were designed to purposefully trick kids into choosing the wrong answer.  Kudos to you!

Man, FCAT, you really know how to go out with a bang! The past three years were by far your most disorganized, stressful years yet.  Not only have we been forced to endure the pressure and accountability already associated with your madness, but then those lovely politicians in the Education Department decided to pay a big-wig company, who will remain nameless, to put you ONLINE.  It’s so wonderful that this version of yourself is the one that we will have ingrained in our memories for all of eternity.  My school was utter chaos the last two weeks, and I know we aren’t alone.  I’m not sure if people were actually aware of the impact you had in real classrooms state wide.  As if our students weren’t stressed out enough, they had to deal with the CBT (Computer Based Test) kicking them off every few minutes.  Our ESE students are the ones who have the most pressure on them.  Many of them haven’t passed yet, and they have several accommodations that require extra time, silence, and additional technology.  A group of our ESE students at one point had five adults in the room trying to fix technical issues, and due to the interruptions, many of them were misbehaving since their tests kept malfunctioning.  They were re-started multiple times, and call me crazy, but I’ll bet my paycheck that those kids don’t pass…again.  How can we expect them to?  Nobody could concentrate in conditions like those, and the worst part is that this was happening all over the state.  Don’t worry FCAT, your scores will still be counted towards school grades, will still determine whether a kid moves to fourth grade or graduates high school, and will still be tied to teacher performance.  It’s totally fair and accurate.  In my opinion, every test score from this year that was administered on the computer should be invalidated.  There is no way humanly possible that they can be counted as an accurate representation of what our students are capable of.  Way to drop the ball.

FCAT, for so long you have been the very core of education in the state of Florida.  Every lesson, every activity, and every assignment before April were created with you in mind.  You have to be proud of yourself for coining the phrase, “teaching to the test.” I honestly don’t know what we are going to do now that you are gone! Will we finally be able to create engaging lessons that center around what the students NEED to learn versus what the test says they HAVE to learn?  Will we finally be able to let our students read text that interests them and makes them love reading again instead of bore them to tears?  The sad part is that the answer to these questions is no.  I’m sure that you will simply be replaced with yet another test, created by yet another corporate company instead of actual educators, that keeps the educational system centered on politics and a false sense of reality regarding student performance.  The truth is, FCAT, you were never a true representation of student performance.  I think it’s absolutely ludicrous that we base a student or school’s performance on one single test.  There has to be a better way.  You know what, there IS a better way, and I’m not going to stop trying until I do everything in my power to find a more efficient, and fair method to measuring how children perform in school.  That may not be a whole lot at first, but it starts with one person, and now that you have been eliminated, I am one step closer. 

This week, all across the state of Florida, students will be breathing deep sighs of relief.  They will feel at ease knowing that they have conquered you one last and final time.  We don’t even need to tell them that another brainwashing test will come along next year to continue to try to mold them into anxious, depressed little versions of themselves.  We’ll let them revel in the fact that despite your many attempts to knock them down each year, they once again prevailed, and they can say goodbye to you for good.  Teachers all across the state will be rejoicing in your passing, and will no longer have to live in fear of you taking our jobs for one simple little paperwork mistake.  You know, teachers are suspended and lose their jobs because of you every year, yet they can get arrested for drunk driving, and come right back to work on Monday.  The most celebrated time of the year is the month of May, because we can FINALLY TEACH! For one glorious month, we can teach meaningful, creative, and engaging lessons that educate our kids on events related to the world around them.  We can use technology freely, and read NOVELS. (Gasp!) Sometimes I feel that my students LEARN more in that one month than they do all year….because they LOVE what they are learning about. 

FCAT, as my eulogy comes to a close, I can honestly say that you have taken the joy of learning right out of our children.  Sucked it right out of them like a vacuum.  I have beautiful, bright, intelligent students sitting in my classroom every day.  Every day, they put 110% of themselves into their academic work.  They try as hard as they know how, and yet still…you determine their fate.   One test.  One day.  FCAT, you can feel at ease knowing you will leave a lasting legacy behind.  A legacy that one day, our state education department will realize what it’s doing to the youth of our country.  One day, they will realize it’s time to give the power to the teachers.  It’s time to create a measure of student performance that actually highlights our children’s strengths over time, and that makes them want to take ownership over their performance, and be proud of it. 

I look at it this way, FCAT, maybe you weren’t such a waste after all.  We can look at you as a learning experience.  A sixteen-year experiment that went horribly wrong, but that we can grow from.  A lesson on what’s truly wrong at the heart of education in this country, and how we can move forward so that our youth isn’t a bunch of lazy, brainwashed zombies, but instead, independent, self-advocating, higher-level thinkers.  They’ve had it in them all along, but you have kept it hidden. 

It’s time for you to go, and time for them to finally shine.   

I Can't Do It Alone...

It's the week before FCAT.  Let's take a peek inside a middle school classroom...

The bell rings and some of the class begins their Do Now for the day.  The class is working on connotative and denotative meanings of words.  It's a review.  There was a unit previously taught covering this concept in both reading and language arts.  There are four students who immediately grab their notebooks, and begin working as the last chime of the bell is fading away.  One of them looks extremely frustrated as he is trying to concentrate, but is distracted by the student next to him yelling for a pencil.  Another of these "on task" students is already finished with the Do Now within a minute and is now sitting at his desk with a bored expression on his face.   Furthermore, there are three students who do not have a pencil despite the fact that it's the last period of the day.  Two of them are up walking around the room trying to find a pencil rather than ask the teacher.  The other one doesn't even bother to mention that he needs a pencil, and he just continues to sit at his desk without said pencil, without a notebook, and without a backpack, and he eventually falls asleep.  Meanwhile, as one of the teachers in the room tries to round up some pencils, and take attendance at the same time, the other teacher is trying to settle down a very visibly angry young lady who is screaming "Shut Up" across the room because someone asked her if she was okay.  One young man with permanent marker all up and down his arms is attempting to hide the cane of a visually impaired student as she puts her head down on her desk because she feels defeated.  Now that one of the teachers has finished attendance, she is asking a student with his nose in a Pokemon book...again...to put his book away and begin working.  He whines loudly as he is obsessed with Pokemon, and claims that he has no idea what connotation even means anyways.  Eventually, the teachers manage to get every student somewhat on the same page, and they can begin their review.  It's probably important to mention that all of this has happened within the first five minutes of class.  

This is the struggle that I go through with my sixth grade, co-teach language arts class every single day.  It's my reality.  It's my frustration.  It's my passion.  It's my reason for this blog post today.

Today, I am speaking up.  I am speaking up to change our educational system.  I want my voice to be heard in every school, in every county, in every state.  I'm not naive.  I know that the chances of me actually changing our country's educational system by myself are slim to none. 

But...quoting the brilliant Malala Yousafzai, "One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world."

I have hope.

There are teachers who speak out and "complain" about the system every day.  It's in the newspapers, and it's all over social media.  They protest performance pay, and they advocate for teacher's rights.  Don't get me wrong, I wish we got paid more.  Who doesn't? Guys, it's more than that.  To me, it's not about the teachers.  

What about the students?
Who is speaking up for them?

Right now, our educational framework is failing our students.  I honestly hate to be negative, but it's the truth.  I see it every single day.  I have students in my basic sixth grade classroom who literally can't read.  They can't write a complete sentence, and they can't tell me the difference between a noun and a verb.  Unfortunately, these students are the ones with behavior issues.  They act out in class because they literally have no idea how to do the work that I am giving them.  They can't spell three-letter words, yet we are reading Chapter 1 of Treasure Island to prepare for FCAT.  Can I blame them?  

The one thing I keep asking myself over and over is, "How in the name of Hogwarts have some of these students been passed on grade after grade without basic reading skills?"

I'll tell you how...it's a combination of No Child Left Behind, standardized testing, politics, and placement and services offered for ESE or Non-ESE students.  Our off-track students are LITERALLY FALLING THROUGH THE CRACKS right before our eyes.  The system is failing them.  Both literally and figuratively.

Trust me,  I understand how support facilitation and inclusion are SUPPOSED to work.  I understand how differentiation is SUPPOSED to work.  The problem is they aren't being used properly.  Support facilitation and inclusion only work if there is a proper ratio of ESE students to non-ESE students.  They tell us that the higher level students will help bring up the lower level students.  That's all fine and dandy, but it's not reality.  In my ONE co-teach class alone, I have students labeled SLD, Autistic, Visually Impaired, EBD, OHI, and all of them are of varying abilities and levels.  This is combined with 3 or 4 higher level students, and some non-ESE students still sitting with Level 1's on FCAT reading.  It just IS NOT POSSIBLE to differentiate to meet the needs of all those students.  Someone is always left behind.  Someone is always slipping through our fingers.  

This week, as I am completing last minute FCAT reviews with my classes, the detriment to these students is becoming apparent to me more than ever.  I am reading poems and passages with them that were written in the 1800's, and that use language that they've never even heard before.  They shut down immediately because they don't have the stamina needed to get through a tough reading passage.  They shut down because they have no idea what "alliteration" or "antagonist" even mean, much less be able to connect those words to the text.  It's not that they aren't trying.  They just can't do it.

I'm just going to say it...many of my lowest students can't pass the FCAT this year.  It won't happen.  

At this point, they are too behind.  And instead of placing them in a setting where they can somewhat catch up, they are simply passed on year after year.  The distance between their ability levels and the difficulty of the content they are being asked to process is getting greater and greater.  With Common Core, it will only get worse. Unless we do something about it.  I'm not trying to be a pessimist, and you might be thinking, "What kind of a teacher is this, saying the dreaded word CAN'T, and that her students won't succeed." 

I'm the kind of teacher that calls it like it is.  I'm realistic.  I'm not going to keep quiet any longer.  I realize the problem we have in our schools, and I realize the magnitude of it.  It's time for me to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!  I want to be the voice that my students don't have.  They don't know any better.  Something has to change.  I can't look at their faces any longer when we are reviewing FCAT passages and questions and they have very clear realization that they aren't going to pass.  Again.  My kids aren't stupid.  They have just given up.  We, as educators, can't let that happen.  I had a young lady ask me, "Mrs. Ebert, why can't I read stories on my reading level in class?  I can answer questions about Magic Tree House, but I have no idea what happened just now when we read "Eleven" (by Sandra Cisneros)."  How am I supposed to look at that student, and tell them it's because the state standardized test that is the very center of your educational universe says you can't?  It's like a continuous game of catch up, or like a hamster on a wheel.  These poor kids aren't getting anywhere.  They can't analyze the use of personification in a text because they don't know the meaning of personification, and they can't read the lines of text indicated without one on one assistance.  

We need to take a good hard look at the placement of our at risk kids, and the big question that needs to be answered is...

"Is it the needs that drive placement, or the label?"

I can't tell you how many times I've had a student in my classroom that simply does not belong there, whether it be in regards to academics or behavior.  Their needs aren't being met, and the needs of the kids around them aren't being met if they have behavior issues.  We're always told that unless they have a certain label, our classrooms are the only place they can be.  This is just ridiculous.  Deferring to labels is completely political, and we are ignoring the true needs of the student.  Maybe a teacher in the past didn't bring them up to be labeled with a disability, or maybe the paperwork takes a million years to process.  Meanwhile, they are not being successful in a basic education setting, and again...falling through the cracks.  How can you have a student who's been in a self-contained environment with no more than 8 students in their classroom, and 2 teachers, for all of their school life, and then the second they get to middle school...BAM.  They are now in a class of 25 students with 1 teacher, and are expected to be successful because "there isn't anywhere else for them to go." Tell me how that makes sense?  

For so long, politics have run our educational systems.  What's the root of why so many students aren't passing standardized tests?...politics.  What's the root of the process for placing students in the proper classroom setting?...politics.  What's the root of passing kids on grade after grade even though they don't have the skills necessary to thrive?...politics.  

As the adults in the classroom with these kids every single day, we need to let our voices be heard!  As the ones who struggle through every sentence of a reading passage, every math problem, every behavior outburst, every tear, every laugh, every success, every failure, with our kids...we need to speak up! Speak up for every child that you have seen pass through your door with grimaces of defeat on their little faces, and words of "It's just too hard" ringing in your ears.  

We are teachers! We have the power to make a difference in the way our schools are run.  We have the power to create changes, and to move our students towards TRULY becoming global, passionate, proud, twenty-first century learners.  Let the teachers create the tests, let the teachers decide the placement of students that they work with every day, let the teachers decide if a student is ready to move on to the next grade.  

Let the teachers teach.

I don't care about how much money I get paid.  I'm not in this profession to be rich.  The problem isn't about tying my pay to my students test scores.  I'm actually okay with that.  The problem is the test itself.  I care about my kids. PERIOD.  Things have got to change.  I want to walk into my co-teach class every day and know that there is true learning being done.  FOR ALL STUDENTS in the room.  

I might have the kids that don't bring a pencil to school, the kids who fall asleep every day, the kids who refuse to do work, or the kids who scream "shut up" across the classroom.  They might make me want to pull my hair out somedays or make have to vent for hours to my husband after work a time or two...or three.  

But they are my kids.  I love them.  I will stand up for their right to a fair education.  I will not give up on them.  I will fight if I feel they are not having their needs met.  I will be the voice that they don't know how to be.

But Guys...I. Can't. Do. It. Alone.