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Blog: FCAR
Speakout
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Support open, broad-based assessment of learning --
contribute to FCAR.
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About Us
The Florida Comprehensive Assessment
Test (FCAT) is a secret, high-stakes test that cannibalizes the curriculum,
penalizes poor test-takers, diverts scarce resources, traumatizes children,
shames and stigmatizes communities, usurps local control, and turns schools into
giant test prep centers.
The Florida Coalition for Assessment Reform, Inc. (FCAR) is a grassroots
not-for-profit organization that provides resources and assistance to parents,
teachers, students, and other citizens who support constructive assessment.
More about
us
Florida Test Reform Email News
Digest (F-TREND)
F-TREND is our weekly digest
of news, opinion, and resources with a focus on the use of high-stakes testing
(FCAT) in Florida's public schools.
Don't miss the
current issue of F-TREND (July 27). Here
are some highlights:
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FCAT third-grade reading law
questioned
By Nirvi Shah and Hannah Sampson ● Miami
Herald ● July 13, 2008
Studies in Dade and Broward question the effectiveness of mandatory
FCAT-based retention of third-graders. |
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Law aims to declaw FCAT mania
By Catherine Dolinski ● Tampa Tribune
● July 20, 2008
"FCAT skeptics say the new policy is a triumph, in that it acknowledges
there is too much focus on the high-stakes test. But they question how much
practical effect the law will have, given the myriad exceptions that lawmakers
built into it." (FCAR member Sherman Dorn is quoted in this article.) |
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Blame FCAT, and then some
Ocala Star-Banner ● July 3, 2008.
The Ocala Star-Banner is emerging as one of the most consistently informed
critics of the FCAT. In this editorial, they explore and expose the effects of
depriving students who score below the magic number on FCAT of electives. |
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School Board rebels against FCAT
tyranny
By Fred Grimm ● Miami Herald
● July 24, 2008
"The revolution began at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday. The Broward School Board
refused to kill a charter school. The board said no to the ideologues in
Tallahassee who confuse FCAT decrees with holy Scripture."
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Take Action!
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CALL FOR CONTRIBUTORS to
Educational Courage: Resisting the Ambush of Public Education
Two distinguished educators from
New York are soliciting personal narratives, poems, analyses, and short
stories that will highlight the dramatic changes in public education since the
No Child Left Behind Act. Sections of the book will include the following:
“Is this what we call ‘education'”?
“I Won’t Be a Part of This”! : Educators, Parents, Students and Community
Members Resist
Resisting by Working in the Cracks: Creating Spaces to Teach
Authentically
“Not My Voice Alone”: Organizing to Reclaim Public Education
Deadline for submission of proposals is Sept. 1, 2008. Deadline for pieces is
November 1, 2008. For more information see
Call for Contributors.
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Help document the impact of high
stakes tests on students' and others' lives.
We are looking for teachers,
parents, guidance counselors, school nurses, or anyone else who has firsthand
experiences that can help us document as richly as possible the experience of
high stakes testing in schools.
If you have stories you can share with us, we ask you to participate in a very
short and completely anonymous survey. It should take about ten
minutes--perhaps more if you have a lot to say.
Interested school personnel please go to:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=351423260023
Interested parents please go to:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=246153266525
If you know of anyone else who may have pertinent experience to contribute
please direct them to these websites.
Thank you for your help.
Peter Johnston (Professor, State University of New York at Albany)
Kathy Champeau (Reading Specialist,
Wisconsin State Reading Association).
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Sign a Petition Calling for the
Dismantling of NCLB
http://www.petitiononline.com/1teacher/petition.html
By a unanimous vote, the Board of Directors of the Florida Coalition for
Assessment Reform has signed on as an organizational partner of the Educator
Roundtable.
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FCAR Notes
Dr. Bob Lange Steps Down as FCAR
Rep on FCAT External Review Committee
Dr. Robert Lange, retired UCF professor of educational measurement, who
represented FCAR on the Department of Education's external advisory committee
charged with establishing the process for reviewing scoring anomalies in the
FCAT, has resigned from the group due to family illness. Bob Lange is a great
advocate of public education, a scholar who freely shares his knowledge, time,
and energy, and a tireless supporter and friend of FCAR. We are grateful for
all his contributions and look forward to his return to active duty with FCAR.
We send our best wishes to Bob, his wife Shirley, and their family.
FCAR Board Approves Appointment of Dr. Sherman Dorn
We are fortunate that Dr. Sherman Dorn will fill Bob Lange's seat on the FCAT
review committee. Trained formally both as an historian and a demographer,
Sherman Dorn spent three years as a postdoctoral researcher at Vanderbilt
University. Since 1996, he has taught social-science and humanities
perspectives on education at the University of South Florida. Today, he is
editor of Education Policy Analysis Archives, one of the main peer-reviewed
education policy journals in the United States. In addition to writing books
on dropping out and accountability, Dr. Dorn is the coeditor of books on
school communities and Florida education policy, the author of several
articles and book chapters on the history of special education, and several
pieces on academic freedom in higher education. His latest book is
Accountability Frankenstein: Understanding and Taming the Monster.
Sherman lives in Tampa with his wife and two children, volunteering with the
local public schools and youth groups. He has also been a friend and supporter
of FCAR since he first advised FCAR founder Gloria Pipkin in 2000 at a meeting
in Tallahassee. In case we've made Sherman sound so scholarly that he comes
across as Professor Gradgrind, check out his blog at
http://www.shermandorn.com/, with
special attention to the July 19, 2007, entry and his "Simpsonized" portrait.
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