State should fix FCAT, not teachers

Wendy Ford | Special To The Sentinel

March 13, 2009

I was disgusted to read that there is a bill before the state Legislature proposing that teachers work 10 years before they can be eligible for a professional contract. I can't help but think that the person who proposed it must not have children and must not care about the outcome for students.

Were investment bankers pinned to such a requirement, we might not be embroiled in an economic crisis.

Many teachers such as I already have suffered under the three-year provision. I lost a full-time teaching position despite glowing evaluations, family and faculty support. My administration simply chose to no longer offer music education. This left me with no option beyond a part-time job with a charter school this year to support my family of four, with next year's course still uncertain. (Despite the fact that I am K-6 certified, I am often passed over for classroom positions because of my lack of " FCAT stats.")

The passing of this bill is unlikely to alter FCAT scores, but it is highly likely to rob students of one of their mainstays of support in our latchkey society. I am still approached by students from the school where I taught last year, asking why I abandoned them. This school has a high at-risk population.

I disagree with emphasis on FCAT performance as a measure of teacher performance for two reasons: First, the under-performance of students cannot be solely attributed to the teacher. There is little structure at home for these students because of a growing number of households in which both parents work. Educator Ruby Payne's now-famous A Frameworks for Understanding Poverty has demonstrated that students from low-income households cannot be empowered to perform simply thorough an academic approach; teachers often fill the role of counselors and baby sitters, and don't have enough resources to provide services required by many of these students. We lead the horses to the water, but they cannot always drink.

Secondly, the assessment of FCAT results are relative because the bar for performance is raised higher every year. Just recently the Sentinel covered the phenomenon of an increasing number of middle-school students taking college courses. I fail to see how this is an indicator of poor teacher performance in the past.

The state should not seek to fix teachers; rather it should fix the FCAT. The viability of what FCAT measures has not been demonstrated adequately, but Sunshine State Standards make clear that students must be able to make real-life connections from what they learn.

Because I have a professional background in multicultural services, I taught about Motown during Black History Month and have taught, in Spanish class, the relevance of Mexico's Cinco de Mayo victory to the outcome of the U.S. Civil War. When I see kids' eyes light up and hear them ask pertinent questions, that is the greatest indicator for me.

Wendy Ford of Eustis is a teacher at Milestones Community School in Leesburg.
__________

Read the op-ed and post a comment on orlandosentinel.com.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinio...0,4522129.story