The FCAT Process Taught Them to “Write Like Robots”
One listen to the drivel that’s coming out of Gerard Robinson’s mouth at his “listening” this week demonstrates what we’ve known all along. Top-down ed reformers like Robinson and his handlers don’t do a lot of, well, listening. As the Miami Herald wrote last week, “when “stakeholders” are invited to give their input, as teachers, parents and civil rights activists who have challenged the state over its requirements for students with disabilities or those learning English, their recommendations have been ignored.”
Robinson brushed aside parent’s concerns with testing yesterday in West Palm Beach with an airy, “what I’m hearing is that people just don’t like tests.”
But if we go back to stakeholders again – a group of people Robinson for whom clearly has contempt – Floridians are learning about the product that has emerged from the tests Robinson so cherishes. Consider this observation from writer and former college English Composition professor, Mary Jo Melone. She writes this inFlorida Voices:
Robinson brushed aside parent’s concerns with testing yesterday in West Palm Beach with an airy, “what I’m hearing is that people just don’t like tests.”
But if we go back to stakeholders again – a group of people Robinson for whom clearly has contempt – Floridians are learning about the product that has emerged from the tests Robinson so cherishes. Consider this observation from writer and former college English Composition professor, Mary Jo Melone. She writes this inFlorida Voices:
My composition students, most of them 18-year-olds straight out of Florida’s public schools, opened my eyes to the FCAT, specifically the writing test that has of late become the most
