May God help the public school kids in Florida..

A good friend send this to me,I thought I would share with you all. This is one reason we are OUT of public school! Someone needs to stop the insanity. To me, the very worse thing to ever do to a kid is kill their self esteem,we are seriously killing our kids! :cry:

Rigidity in Florida and the Results

July 23, 2003
By MICHAEL WINERIP

ORLANDO, Fla.

DEREK ADAMSON is a good student at Citrus Elementary in
Ocoee, Fla., but he did not pass the state reading test,
the FCAT, required for promotion to fourth grade. He was
not alone. This spring, 23 percent of Florida third
graders, or 43,000 youngsters, failed the test and, under
the state’s new retention policy, were slated to be held
back.

But Derek and his parents did not give up. Derek rose early
each morning last month to attend one of the state-financed
four-week summer reading camps for third graders, created
to give them one last chance at promotion.

Right away, he discovered, this was not a fun camp. It was
four hours daily featuring McGraw-Hill-scripted reading
drills. At the end, students took the Stanford 9 test and,
to be promoted, had to score at the 51st percentile.

Of the 1,715 third graders who attended the summer reading
program here in Orange County, only 15 percent passed, and
it now appears that four to five times more Florida third
graders than a year ago will be held back this fall. Derek
missed by one question, scoring at the 50th percentile. His
principal, Louise Brown, says he deserves to be promoted.

“Derek’s a late bloomer, just coming into his own - not
everyone reads on the same time scale,” Ms. Brown said. By
scoring at the 50th percentile, Derek is reading better
than half the nation’s third graders. But according to the
new state rules on retention, championed by Gov. Jeb Bush,
the principal and the teacher have almost no say in
promotion.

The standard error of measurement on the Stanford 9,
developed by Harcourt Assessment, is 3.2 points, meaning
Derek’s score may reflect a reading ability above the 51st
percentile. But that won’t help Derek. The law does not
consider margin of error. And while Derek’s parents tell
him that he did great, it’s not helping.

“I don’t want to go back to Citrus,” he said. “My friends
would probably laugh at me. They got their FCAT back, they
all say, `I passed, I passed.’ The kids who don’t pass, we
had to sit there and listen.”

Raven Callahan, a student at nearby Lakeville Elementary,
knows the feeling. She also scored 50 on the test. “I need
to get promoted,” she said. “I want to go to college and
make some money and stuff so I can grow up, and not be left
back in third grade. And people will start talking about me
if I get left back. Your friends passed and you don’t have
friends left to talk to. If you’re the bigger kid in the
class - I don’t want to be the big dufe.”

In Orange County alone, hundreds are being held back who
scored within the standard deviation for passing the
Stanford 9; 71 of them, including Derek and Raven, missed
by one question. County officials were so concerned that
they ordered those 71 tests rescored by hand, to
double-check for grading errors. Everything in education is
now supposed to be “scientifically based.” The phrase is
used dozens of times in the federal No Child Left Behind
Act. But it is as true today as it was in Galileo’s time,
politicians pick the science that suits them. In Florida’s
push to get every child reading by third grade, politicians
have ignored the scientific studies on retention, which
overwhelmingly conclude that students held back suffer
academically, dropping out at a higher rate.

In embracing standardized testing as the tool of scientific
measurement, they have disregarded the testers’ own
cautions. Harcourt’s Stanford 9 manual warns that a major
“misuse of standardized achievement test scores is making
promotion and retention decisions for individual students
solely on the basis of these scores.” And while Florida has
a handful of retention exemptions - including for foreign
language speakers and the disabled - most students must
pass the FCAT or Stanford 9, or be retained.

Even Texas, an aggressive testing state, has left the
retention decision to principals, teachers and parents,
resulting in a third-grade rate this year that is expected
to be similar to Florida’s rate in past years, 3 percent to
4 percent held back. While Florida officials say it will be
several weeks before statewide data are complete, results
in Orlando and St. Petersburg indicate that 15 percent
could be held back, perhaps 27,000 third graders statewide.

Last month, state officials rode around Florida on a bus
promoting the summer camps, and Governor Bush was
photographed reading to third graders. Teachers and
principals just rolled their eyes. There is much research
on the limitation of remedial summer school, and though Ms.
Brown, the Citrus principal, chose six top teachers for her
reading camp, she was not surprised when only 3 of 37
students passed.

“A lot have serious limitations that won’t go away in four
weeks,” Ms. Brown said.

She plans to add two third-grade classes for the 41
students slated to be retained. Ms. Brown is not against
testing. Her school has an A rating from the state, based
largely on strong test scores. But she says she does not
believe that tests should replace human judgment and says
that just a couple of her third graders should be retained.

“A child will not read any better whether he’s sitting in a
third-grade or fourth-grade classroom,” Ms. Brown said.

When the tests of the 71 who scored at the 50th percentile
were hand-graded, one additional student, Raven Callahan,
passed. The scoring machine had marked a question wrong
because of an erasure. Instantly, Raven was transformed
from third-grade dufe to a state-certified fourth grader.
Still, her mother, Annette Callahan, was furious at the
state policy. “The people putting all this stress on third
graders are out of their minds,” she said.

For Derek Adamson, the news was not so good, but the
principal called with a plan. Ms. Brown told his mother,
Latonia, that for the few who had come close on the test,
she was going to try for a portfolio exemption. He would
have to start in third grade, but if he passed a series of
shorter tests, he could be promoted in a month.

Ms. Adamson reminded Derek that he had promised to make one
more big push.

“Remember we discussed how we’re going to read and write
this summer and be ready for the new school year?” she
said. Derek lowered his eyes.

“You promised,” his mother said.

“You made me,” Derek
replied.