FCAT resistance grows in Florida
In the heyday of chattel slavery in this country the idea of its “inevitability” was one of the pillars on which it survived. Resistance was futile, slavery was the way things were and so would they forever be. Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, John Brown refused to shrink from the fight based on the idea and though it cost them their lives it turned out they were right. From the moment this vile and inhumane system came into existence it was destined to be torn apart by good people. Many perished in the bloodiest war ever fought on American soil but slavery was consigned to history’s trash—where it belonged.
Just like slavery the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, the FCAT, is a vile and inhumane instrument that has advanced the political and economic fortunes of a few at the cost of so many children’s pain, suffering and in the worst cases, their destruction. And just like slavery the FCAT is hoisted on the petard of inevitability.
The Superintendent of Miami-Dade County public schools, Dr. Rudolph Crew, has observed publicly that “the FCAT dumbs down education in the state of Florida” but turned around and told a gathering of the NAACP that “everyone I've spoken to in Tallahassee says the test is here to stay, so get used to it.” With all due respect to Dr. Crew, he should have laughed in the faces of the people he spoke to in Tallahassee. What nonsense! The only inevitability associated with the FCAT is its death. It may have been King Solomon or Abraham Lincoln who said it but it applies to the plague of FCAT, “and this, too, shall pass.”
The FCAT will not be abolished in the dramatic fashion of slavery. There will be no call to arms, no civil war. Instead the FCAT will fade away much as the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War did. The people of Florida will force an “exit strategy” on the state government. The resistance which goes back to pioneer test abolitionists like State Sen. Frederica Wilson and Pastor Victor T. Curry and the members of the Florida Coalition for Assessment Reform (FCAR) are being joined by more people of good will everyday now.
Broward School Board member Stephanie Kraft wants to banish the FCAT from the high schools, Hillsborough County’s John Hilderbrand is leading a testing director’s assault on the unfairness of the test, and Broward Superintendent Jim Notter, speaking of FCAT, has said, “What we’re doing to our children and administrators and teachers is blatantly wrong.”
Now the man who replaced the Simon Legree of FCAT testing in the governor’s office may finally be making good on his pledge to modify the overwhelming reliance on a single testing instrument for branding Florida’s public schools and students. On Nov. 14, Gov. Charlie Crist will see off a delegation of Florida’s education leaders to New York State to examine their subject area Regents Exams testing system. The exit strategy is beginning to take shape. The tide is turning.
The fact that our FCAT nightmare will soon surely end will not change the fact that we did live through it. This unfortunate generation of students and their teachers and parents will carry deep scars into the future. In recent years tens of thousands of 9 and 10-year-old children have been told they are failures and humiliated with third grade retention. Pray they will be healed of bitterness for all our sakes. Hope that someday they will tell their children, freed from testing tyranny, the horror stories of the bad old days when some people actually believed the FCAT was inevitable.
Paul A. Moore
Teacher, Miami Carol City High School
Pmoore1953@aol.com
The above is dedicated to Staff Sergeant Donnie D. Dixon, Miami Carol City Class of 1988, U.S. Army Sergeant Joe Polo, MCC Class of 1995, and Army Private First Class Charles M. Sims, MCC Class of 2002. These three glorious young men shaped in our “failing” school went to their deaths in Iraq in service of their country.
