Mom Upset By FCAT Pulls Son From School

POSTED: Thursday, March 12, 2009

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Heather Vrabel was so angry over how the school district handled her son's FCAT testing that she withdrew him from Oceanway Middle School on Thursday.

Vrabel said the math portion of his state-mandated test was invalidated on Wednesday because he didn't turn his test over and stop when the monitor said to.

"I think it was about 20 to 25 seconds right after she said it was time," Zachary Vrabel said.

Heather thinks that invalidating the test is too extreme, so she is going to home school her son.

"How important is this FCAT? That they rearrange the school schedules; they've done focus days; they've taken away all of this teacher time to teach this test," Heather Vrabel said. "And then they are going to invalidate it over you didn't follow a strict rule? I can't even comprehend that."

Zachary said two other students in her son's classroom had their tests invalidated to because they asked for pencils.

The school district told Channel 4's Adam Landau that the rules are made by the state. They know they are strict, but they have to follow them.

They also say the FCAT scores do not affect students' grades or, in the case, the ability to advance to the next grade.
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