Tuesday, February 21, 2012

FCAT in an Urban Setting

I had an interesting conversation with an administrator today. The school had been questioned due to FCAT scores being raised. Why not celebrate you ask, well it was in an urban area. How could the children at this particular school be successful? How could the teachers have taught content in small-groups through hands on learning? It saddened me others were challenging scores and "outsiders" actually came in to rescore the tests. I was glad to see the teachers not giving up and moving ahead, continuing to believe in the students the teach! (and administration)

3 comments:

  1. I guess the self-fulfilling prophecy is not just within the classroom. When students from disadvantaged schools (in the context of standardized testing, center-based programs like Cherokee struggle as well), succeed to their own standards, they're either ignored or questioned. When they fail, the negative attention they receive continues the stereotype anyway. It seems like a no-win situation.

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  2. It really makes me question administrators....

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  3. How sad yet very indicative of how our society thinks. I wonder if there were other reasons for their investigation or if it was purely as despicable as it seems. I wonder how much change could actually occur if we dropped stereotypes and truly began to believe in what we preach.

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