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Jessica Zammett (FGCU); FCAT
The Florida Department of Education defines the FCAT as the Florida Comprehensive Assesment Test, which measures student knowledge and understanding of reading, writing, science, and mathematics content as described in the Sunshine State Standards. According to the FCAT fact sheet, the purpose of the statewide assesment gathers two types of information–because parents, teachers, and students need FCAT data information about mastery of a student’s skills, and the general public needs FCAT data to understand the “educational health” of students to hold schools and districts accountable for progress.
There is a lot of controversy surrounding the FCAT. Should a single test determine if a student is either promoted to the next grade level or retained?
When I was in 10th grade, I had a great English teacher, who not only taught us but also made us understand Bloom’s Taxonomy. I really do believe that this helped me to pass the FCAT. It isn’t uncommon for a student to not excel in test taking. Not enough sleep, nerves, and numerous other factors can influence the performance of a student taking a test.
I’m not saying that the FCAT is a “bad” test. The FCAT is a pretty good assesment of a student’s knowledge. However, in a certain sense, I feel that sometimes a school can be so concerned with their overall “grade”, that they don’t do as well of a job teaching students other skills that are necessary for success. I’ve had a couple of teachers in the past who have really focused on teaching the whole class to pass the FCAT, and it seemed like they put this subject before anything else, as if it were the most important thing to study.
If a student doesn’t pass the FCAT their sophomore year in high school, they just have to continue to take it until they pass it. In my opinion, I don’t think that juniors, and especially seniors in high school should have the big FCAT rain cloud hanging over their heads. Generally, juniors and seniors in high school are busy looking into colleges, sending in applications, taking SAT’s and ACT’s, and so on. They shouldn’t have to wonder whether or not they will actually be graduating. This is a lot of pressure for a high school student to take, and most people don’t realize that.
Works Cited
http://fcat.fldoe.org/pdf/fcatfact.pdf
25. April 2009 at 17:00
Trang Nguyen (Edison)
I’m so agree with you. I think Florida depend too much on the FCAT to get the student to stay in their grade level or move on, and also to see if the person could graduate.
I moved to Florida during my senior, so I don’t know the FCAT at all, and during my senior years, I was able to take the FCAT twice. I have test anxiety when ever I take a major test, so I wasn’t able to pass the FCAT, and if you didn’t pass the FCAT, you couldn’t graduate, which gives me a major impact, scaring I wouldn’t able to graduate. Even though I was in good academic standing, I couldn’t graduate, well eventually I could. But the FCAT just took so much pressure on the student, they need to worried about passing their class, then the FCAT, then worried about getting into college. During my whole senior year, the thing I learned are about the FCAT, and nothing else.
25. April 2009 at 17:29
I agree with you. I moved to Florida my junior year, so I had no training what so ever, for FCAT. I had no idea what it was when I got here. So they threw this test at me, and told me how important it was, and I don’t do good with tests, and by some miracle I passed the math the first time around which was shocking because I am horrible at math, but I had to take the reading one twice and that is my best subject, and I had to take it twice all because I missed something by half a point. HALF A POINT???
Luckily I passed and was able to graduate, but why do they have to put that pressure on us? I mean I had a 3.6 GPA and was doing well, and the state wants to tell me that I have to pass a silly test to graduate?