FCAT: “They are defending a test that has no accountability”

Marion Brady on the Washington Post blog relayed an email from a friend : A School Board member from one of the largest school systems in the country (Orange County), a guy with advanced degrees and big job, bombs his school system’s standardized tests (The FCAT). He thinks there is a large problem here: Mainly that the wrong people are making the decisions about testing.

“A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.”

Just think, he adds: “If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had.” READ MORE on the POSTLOCAL blog.