Ever feel like this??
Naples Florida second grade teacher Rachel Miller hits FCAT booklets with a hammer during an FCAT pep rally.
You’re about to take your FCATs; what do you think of them? What do they mean to you, your school, your teachers, your future? Are they important? Should we be doing them? Do they measure what you know? Are you prepared?
Practice good argumentation in your response. Be thoughtful and defend your position with sound logic and evidence. Voice your opinion.
By-the-way are you wondering how you did on the sample questions? Grades are in Progress Book, but here is how we did as a whole.
| Number Correct | % Score | # of Students | % of Students |
| 13 | 100.00% | 17 | 24.64% |
| 12 | 92.31% | 13 | 18.84% |
| 11 | 84.62% | 10 | 14.49% |
| 10 | 76.92% | 9 | 13.04% |
| 9 | 69.23% | 7 | 10.14% |
| 8 | 61.54% | 2 | 2.90% |
| 7 | 53.85% | 5 | 7.25% |
| 6 | 46.15% | 1 | 1.45% |
| 5 | 38.46% | 3 | 4.35% |
| 4 | 30.77% | 1 | 1.45% |
| 3 | 23.08% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 2 | 15.38% | 1 | 1.45% |
| 1 | 7.69% | 0 | 0.00% |
| Class Average | 79.71% | ||
This is just a small sample test so I don’t know how well it will predict your actual FCAT score. If you want a better idea take the 2007 test mentioned in the post below.
That Picture is awesome. It makes me wanna do that
But why do you feel like doing that? Tell me more.
I’m with Noah!! Down with FCAT!!
FCAT is just so pointless, time consuming, and intimidating. I mean i stink at taking tests already (and so do lots of other people) so why do adults running the county want us to take something this big and permanit?
The facts actually show that kids that take a test like FCAT-but these don’t count- actually score 90 percent better then kids taking tests that actually count and will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
On top of that, FCAT takes THREE days!! That is three days that teachers have to catch up on to teach us.
I’ll agree that they are time consuming and intimidating. Plus you have a point that some students just don’t seem to do well on tests, but are they pointless?
Let’s say you are a parent who’s looking for a new home wouldn’t you want to have your kids attend “good” schools? Could FCAT scores help you decide?
As a tax payer would you want to know that your tax dollars are resulting in good educations for all children?
If you were superintendent of schools wouldn’t you want some means to verify all schools were meeting educational standards?
How could you do these things without some kind of test?
I agree with Lauren
Why do you agree?
You are ready for this!! Windy Ridge rocks the test!
I agree with her because some/most of the stuff on FCAT is just pointless. It’s a test I could of passed in 6th grade. Its too easy and it leaves me with an exteme amount of time to sit their and do nothing. I do check my work and reread and retry stuff but I don’t think we all need 80 minutes to do that. Plus, the stuff on the test is not from some stuff I learned this year. Like slope and references. Which is good that it’s not on the test, but then again why did we learn it if it is not on FCAT?
I see what you mean, but Windy Ridge is not your average school. Let’s look at some
stats:
Reading Level 3+
State 54% of 8th grade students tested (21% level 4 or 5)
Orange County 51% (18% level 4 or 5)
Windy Ridge 85% (51% level 4 or 5)
Math Level 3+
State 66% of students (29% level 4 or 5)
Orange County 63% (28% level 4 or 5)
Windy Ridge 92% (71% level 4 or 5)
Science Level 3+
State 41% of students tested (10% level 4 or 5)
Orange County 38% (9% level 4 or 5)
Windy Ridge 84% (41% level 4 or 5)
Think about this; half of the 8th grade students in Florida can’t read on grade level and these numbers are better than they use to be. What do you think that does to their success rates in high school and life? We have to do something about this and we need some kind of controlled test to see if the changes we are making work. All schools are REQUIRED to improve these numbers every year! For Windy Ridge that might mean moving from a 4 to a 5, and focusing on the few students who test below grade level.
Many people would agree with you that the test is still too easy. If that is true why do so many students not test at or above grade level? There is a large movement in education to close failing schools and fire teachers who don’t show improvement in student scores. The cover of Newsweek magazine this week reads “We must fire bad teachers” written over and over again on a chalkboard.
I get that the Fcat may be beneficial to other more average schools, but at Windy Ridge it is just something most kids can blow through easily. I actually kind of like it because it gives us a break from all the work we usually have to do. We get four days (counting Monday afternoon) of no homework. Of course Fcat is testing students on things way lower than the average Windy Ridger, like I am in Geometry (10th grade math) and yet the math is 8th grade math. I do not believe it is of any real use to Windy Ridge, but it is a week I look forward to instead of dread.
I understand what you mean, Kira. Because who doesn’t like the idea of hanging out with friends? I mean I love to!
However, think about all the other days that we have to get more homework and study for more tests just because FCAT took away time the teachers could’ve used to spread that stuff around more.
Furthermore, we don’t really have the whole day to just relax. We have to endure Fcat for several hours of the day.
To add on, FCAT might be easy for some people-and its definitly easy for me-but some kids don’t understand the material. So for the night of FCAT/ FCAT day, they are freaking out because they don’t know the answers to the test! Then they stress even more since they know that the grade of FCAT will stay with them forever and their teachers in future years can access those grades. This is the most common reason for kids to cheat on FCAT.
Ok, so honesly, they need to test us somehow. It’s either going to be FCAT, or a final examine in every core subject, at least that’s how it used to be until we started having to do both. Now, I’d prefer FCAT since it’s way easier, but final exams are fine too. I just don’t like having to do both. I think the school board people should decide between FCAT and final exams, and stop making us do both.
This was sort of unrelated to the other topics.
Ok, bye.
Jeni- I like how you say “bye”
I do see how we NEED some type of test to see where we are at, but look at it this way. It’s a week gone due to FCAT, teachers prepare us 2 months in advance with stuff that isn’t EVEN ON FCAT? Then, after burning our brains for a week, we don’t get anything for it. We go back to our regular schedule and do difficult stuff. I personally don’t want to learn some things because I know it mostly won’t be on the FCAT now.
Yes a big problem, we learn for a test instead of learning because it is important.