Marketed Fear & Distortion Conceal Ineptitude…

The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) is a dismal testament to the failure of our school system to provide a world-class education for our children.

Taxpayers are being fleeced and our students are being deprived of their opportunity to compete on the world stage.

The FCAT, which evaluates a teacher’s ability to successfully impart knowledge and academic skills to their students, has been co-opted by a bureaucracy that refuses to deliver on its promise to America. The FCAT  has been politicized and attacked by individuals unwilling to terminate incompetent teachers and negligent principals.

This measurement evaluates the absolute minimal skills and competencies that a student should have become proficient with, upon the completion of a particular grade cycle.

A very brief period of preparation, under normal circumstances, is all that is required to tune-up a student, so they are able to demonstrate the minimal competencies that are ascertained by this examination.

This device was designed to “assess your child’s teacher”, along with the powers that employ and sanction the performance of that teacher, as it relates to the instruction and learning that may or may not have occurred in their classroom. The FCAT was never developed to grade the students. It was instituted to grade teachers.

Why are teacher unions, politicians and school districts pandering to the notion that there is something inherently wrong with evaluating the effectiveness of a teacher? Extraordinary teachers have been pressured to remain silent, as unions  orchestrate resistance targeting the legitimacy of this valuable assessment device.

Recently there was an effort to expect a little bit more from our teachers, regarding the improved performance of their students on the FCAT. This requirement was quickly purged and rolled back. The ineffective teachers, who did not properly prepare their students for this modest increase in competency, have been given cover and provided excuses for their failure by the union. I haven’t heard anyone address the harmful effect that their negligence has had upon these under-educated students.

Unfortunately, I’ve witnessed every manner of fraud and deception that could be imagined, utilized in identifying ways that the scores of these academic appraisals could be inflated.

Our children don’t stand a chance of ever gaining academic superiority, nor scholastically advancing themselves in relationship to their world counterparts, while attending these government schools. The beauty, potentiality and self-actualizing possibilities of these children will be forever cast upon the broken dreams of their predecessors.