FCAT: Standerdized Testing?? Is it really helpful?
By medney1988
@medney1988 (560)
United States
September 10, 2008 2:15pm CST
If you live in florida this discussion might make you a little heated. We have something called FCAT and if you don't pass it then it great affects your schooling. We start taking FCAT in like elementary as a way to prepare us for the big test in high school. Your sophomore year you take the FCATs and if you don't pass them then you don't graduate. You can't enter honor classes. It just messes up everything. You have chances your junior year and senior year but still if you don't pass you cant graduate.
What a lot of people don't realize is that most of the math questions on FCAT are geometry and algebra 2. 85 percent of these kids are still taking pre-algebra and haven't even touch geometry. how do you expect them to pass a test when they have never learned the materials. reading levels are down because kids don't like to read.
does anyone else think this is pointless? there are some kids who are very smart in class and ace everything but they are horrible at test. i made the same score every single time i took the FCATs. i love to read and i'm very good in math. i got a 3 in reading and 4 in math. i could never get a six but i'm still an intelligent person.
have any of you taken FCATs?? or do you kids take them. if you're from another state do you have something similiar?
2 responses
@cobrateacher (8432)
• United States
11 Sep 08
Most likely, as much as the kids hate FCAT, teachers hate . I teach 12th grade, and maybe one or two kids out of my whole day have yet to pass the test. They're offered tutoring after school, at lunch and on Saturdays. Most who really need it don't go to tutoring at all. Those who go sometimes fail anyway, because they panic at the very thought of the test. Why, then, am I required to include F-CAT materials in all my lesson plans?
There are excellent reasons for the failures that have nothing to do with the kids. They choose the most boring and meaningless readings to use on the test, in order to be sure everything is politically correct. The questions are designed so that at least two of the four choices are correct, and the kids have to figure out which is most correct! If that's no ridiculous, what is? Written responses are often failed for penmanship, which hasn't been taught in the elementary grades for years, and the prompts are ambiguous to s least.
It's truly a lousy test!
Add to that the inordinate pressure we're required to place on the students, and it's a travesty! We're supposed to drop everything else to teach F-CAT material, so the "usual" things are given short shrift, at best! It's wrong very many ways!
1 person likes this
@cobrateacher (8432)
• United States
11 Sep 08
How I wish there were sond advice. Unfortunately, at least for the foreseeable future, we're stuck! Kids in private schools don't have to take it, but they often do, in order to report the scores to colleges. 
@cobrateacher (8432)
• United States
11 Sep 08
Thanks for the "best"! Now I feel even worse about knowing that we're stuck with the stupid test!
@Sarah1108 (310)
• United States
10 Sep 08
I hate the FCAT. My sophomore year was the first year that FCAT was needed so you could graduate high school. I think its a BS test. I feel that its another one to mess with schools and the money that they get from the government. It also hurts the kids. My sister in law graduated with honors but had trouble passing the FCAT. She is not the only one. Many kids drop out of school because they are unable to pass the FCAT. I think a lot of children are getting left behind because of the school system. So many kids are learning math skills in school that their parents were not even taught so how do you expect the children to go home and get homwork help from their parents if they dont know how to do the work either
