Anti-FCAT video stars Orange school board member, students
The pain and frustration of failing FCAT gets on-air attention in a new video that was produced by — and stars — local high school students.
"I took it, failed it," says one student from Freedom High in Orange County. "My Mom loved me, still she had that look like, 'ugh, I can't believe you failed it.' It was a hard time for me."
The video produced in Freedom's television production studio also features School Board member Rick Roach, who wants to "stop the madness" of Florida's high-stakes testing program. He proposed the video after visiting a Freedom remedial reading class filled with students who had failed FCAT.
Roach thinks the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test — a series of exams in math, reading, science and writing taken by nearly 2 million students each year — doesn't accurately measure academic abilities, particularly reading.
"It's all about beating the test maker," he said.
Roach made national news last year when he took versions of the 10th-grade FCAT exams, failed them