The FCAT: A Flawed Format For Grading Public Schools

Singer/songwriter Tom Chapin may not be as well known as contemporaries such as Fergie, Justin Timberlake or the White Stripes. But when he appeared on National Public Radio's Morning Edition last New Year's Day, he struck a chord that has resonated long, proud and strong among teachers who have been shackled by what many educators have dubbed "the dirtiest four-letter word around" - FCAT.
Never mind that FCAT is an acronym, not a word. That's beside the point, which is that the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test continues to be the anvil that weighs down the competitive education experience.
Chapin's ditty "Not on the Test" is a social commentary on the enormous stress placed on students, teachers and the education community to "teach the test" at the expense of anything that is vacant from state-mandated standardized assessments. And while this might be a slight generalization - many area teachers and administrators will proclaim that their respective educational communities continue to incorporate a variety of learning styles and methods into all areas of the curriculum - there is a symbolic truth to Chapin's stance, because so much in today's educational world rides on FCAT results.
Legislators and the Florida Department of Education staunchly insist that the process, which began under then-Gov. Jeb Bush nearly ten years ago, is a method by which educators can be held accountable. But there are many sharks swimming around Bush's A+ educational legacy.
One of the numerous problems is that the FCAT is, and has been and - until further notice - will be a glaringly unsound means by which to rate schools. When Bush devised the FCAT in 1998, it was to measure a child's progress in school.
Not any more. Or, at least, that doesn't seem to be the focus anymore. The FCAT helps decide whether third-graders get promoted and high school seniors graduate. It provides a letter grade for almost every school, which determines whether it is penalized or rewarded with extra money.
A second issue is that the FCAT is neither a criterion-referenced nor a diagnostic test, despite the premise presented by the Department of Education. Educators, parents and students are not allowed to review student responses after taking the test, and there are no legal opportunities for anyone directly involved in the child's educational process to review copies of it. Thus, it cannot be used to help educators identify specific student strengths or weaknesses, or plan child-appropriate lessons.
As far as school grades go, Wellington High School plans to appeal its "B" grade; despite earning more than 50 points above the minimum for an "A," the school was penalized because only 49 percent of its lowest readers showed growth. But there are questions about how, exactly, the state determines the crucial "lowest 25 percent" of students in reading and math. In previous cases, some student scores were counted more than once, while others were skipped, skewing a school's overall score.
And given a third problem with the FCAT - the Department of Education fiasco in May, when state education officials announced they botched one of last year's FCAT reading tests - there are question marks on everything from school grades and student retention to the status of Florida schools under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. This also may have administrators at WHS - and many other "borderline" schools across Florida - questioning the viability and legitimacy of any grade in any category when the state plays a role in determining the grade.
And that, we seriously doubt, was something anyone studied for when preparing to take the test.
This commentary originally appeared in the Town-Crier.

Introspection, Part II (the Sequel)

Think of all the anniversaries taking place right now - some more notable than others. It was June 8, 1972 (35 years ago) when Huỳnh Công Út took one of the most famous photographs in recent history, of the naked 9-year-old Vietnamese girl fleeing from her napalm-bombed home. It was 40 years ago (June 1, 1967) when The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, considered by many the greatest album in music history. And just to really make things interesting, it was 400 years ago (1607) when Jamestown, VA was "founded," making it America's 400th Anniversary.

Then there's June 6, 1982. Twenty-five years ago, when I crossed the stage at the MeadowBrook Auditorium on the campus of Oakland University in suburban Detroit, one of several hundred Bloomfield Hills Lahser seniors accepting diploma covers that would hold the paperwork proclaiming our passage from the seemingly sheltered life of high school into the unknown universe of college.

Damn! Has it really been 25 years? A rhetorical question; "Of course it has - you already stated it!" So much has changed, yet so much has stayed the same.

At the time, I thought my high school friends would be friends for ages and that I was ready to take the next step. History and 20/20 hindsight has not proven to be as kind or able to validate my optimistic view of the time on both of these areas; I now converse with only one of my fellow graduates regularly (and maybe 1-2 others once every blue moon), and my immediate post-high school educational experience was ... less than stellar (and I am being overly kind with my assessment). I've conveniently blown off the 10- and 20-year reunions (I chose the 10-year to move into a new apartment in Waterford, Michigan, while I was in Florida for the 20th), and have heard nothing about a 25-year get-together.

But I am not here to lament the failure to stay in touch with those who helped (or hindered, depending on how you look at it) my formative years. Instead, i'm going to try to pound out a "Top 10" list of positive memories I have managed to hold on to from 1979-82, when I roamed the halls of Lahser High School. I am sure some of my memories are tainted by lost brain cells the past quarter-century, but what the heck? I'll give it a shot. And I won't even consult my yearbooks for this ...

10 - Earning my drivers licence, March 1980: More specifically, that moment during the winter of 1979 when, during driver's training, I took a left turn at Hickory Grove and Lahser roads a bit too quickly and spun out the car. After coming to a halt, I looked at the instructor and said, sheepishly, "I must have hit some sheet ice." He didn't buy it.

9 - Announcing the Lahser-Troy Athens state soccer regular-season match on WBFH-FM, Fall 1981: Also know as the most amazing soccer game no one could see, because it was raining - POURING - and the field was a quagmire of mud. Lahser was #1 in the state, Athens #2, and in an attempt to trick the opposing team, Lahser's coach had its top star player switch jerseys with another player. (The trick didn't work.) Athens won, but the really fun part in the booth was knowing we were broadcasting on the only land-line, and if there were a medical emergency, we'd have to pull the plug on our broadcast so that medical personnel could use the telephone line. That or my screams of "Oy!" when Lahser hit the goalpost on back to back attempts. I can still hear Scott Booth and Pete Bowers laughing in the background.

8 - Rolling Stones/Santana/Iggy Pop, The Pontiac Silverdome, December 1981: Iggy flopped, Santana rocked, and 70,000+ chanted "You can't always get what you want" a'cappella with Mick and the boys.

7 - The Bobbles "Save The World: Liverpool to Lahser" Tour, 1982: The Bobbles were the band Scott Booth, Tim Olson and I created that reworked Beatles lyrics with environmental themes; we named the band after Robert Kefgen, our AP-turned-science teacher. Among our chart-toppers: "Nuclear Submarine" (about nuclear submarines, of course), "Why Don't We Do It To A Toad?" (about biology and dissection, of course), and "All You Need Is Bob" (a tribute song, of course).

6 - Senior Prom, Memorial Day Weekend 1982: The family was in Philadelphia for a family function; I was alone in the house. That right there had the makings for a disaster. But the weekend went off without a hitch (other than that incident involving train signals that didn't work in Macomb County ... and the incident on the campus of Oakland Community College's Farmington Hills campus; suffice to say, "almost" only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and those particular moments).

5 - Receiving acceptance letter to Central Michigan University, February 1982: Yay! Onward and upward!

4 - Graduation: Yay! Onward and outward! (And meeting members of the French Grand Prix team at Meriweather's Restaurant after the ceremony; that was cool, too.)

3 - Eagle Scout, Troop 23, Detroit Area Council, Boy Scouts of America, March 1982: Yay! I was the 104th (next-to-last) Eagle earned under then-scoutmaster Nate Trager; my friend Mark Lawton was #103, and Trager's grandson Jeff was #105.

2 - Lahser Symphony Orchestra @ the Ottawa International Music Festival, Spring 1981: Yeah, going out-of-country for a week or so was a very exciting time. So was meeting girls from Virginia and New York. And, oh yeah, did I mention playing both violin and viola in the same session? And being the "metronome" (so to speak) on viola for the Chamber Orchestra's performance of the Pachelbel Kanon? (Our conductor, Valerie Palmeri, left the stage for our performance; the job of pacing our performance fell to me. Yikes.)

2a - Lahser Symphony Orchestra, State Festival, Spring 1980: Actually, the most cool moment of my orchestra career was the performance of "Night on Bald Mountain" the year before, in the gymnasium of Royal Oak Dondero High School, when we (as a unit) hit the initial climax and stopped playing JUST at the right moment, and the echo reverberated for what seemed like hours. Way cool. We even earned a I+ from one of the judges.

1 - WBFH Marathon, Spring 1982: The team of Dave Eicher, Scott Booth, Paul Gaba and Kelly Kossuth (see how that rhymes?) rode the Starship March-Uv-Dymz into the fundraising arena and helped raise thousands of dollars for the March of Dimes in the battle against birth defects. And $400 of that was earned by me wearing a dress (OK, one of my moms smocks) to school. (I was supposed to wear heels, too, but that proved not to be possible.) Yes, there are photos; no, you may not see them.

Well, that was fun :) Sure beats lamenting over the whole "what the heck has happened since then?" issue.

Introspection, Part I

A few years ago, during an extremely low period in my life, when I essentially hated everything about myself, my job, and all that was around me, I happened upon a powerful passage in one of the guidance counselors' rooms at Wellington High School:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. - Reinhold Niebuhr

It's been a few years, and I've still gone through some rough spells, but by embracing this philosophy, I think - in general - I'm far better off emotionally and mentally. Mind you, at times it's taken an enormous amount of personal willpower and personal reminding to accept this as a life mantra (and at times, I still have to force myself to accept it), but it's been well worth the effort.

I bring this up because at my Wellington Toastmasters meeting last night, Tim Morrel gave a riveting speech about life in general, and he brought up what he believes are the three keys to a happy, successful life:

(1) Take care of yourself
(2) Forgive yourself
(3) Be eternally thankful

In illustrating his reasons, using personal memories from his family experiences, Tim truly brought these reasons to life. And while he was doing so, i must admit, I got lost in my own personal thought process, and began thinking of my own life ... and in doing so, I realized (rather quickly) that I may have been embracing the Serenity Prayer, but I was not giving equal time to Tim's three-prong commentary. To wit: I don't think I have been taking care of myself, I rarely forgive myself, and while I am thankful for many things, I'm not sure "eternally" applies, nor do I think "thankful" applies to enough (because I am not achieving the first two prompts.

(1) Take care of yourself: I'm overweight (and have been for longer than I care to remember). I don't get enough sleep. I spend WAY too much time focusing on work-related issues, and WAY too little time on self interests. In short, I am living vicariously through my job, my students, and my program, to the point where it is unhealthy. I keep saying I will "cut back" on the time factor, but so far, it's been nothing but empty promises to myself.

I've already taken some steps to actually put this into practice. Next school year, for the first time since 2004, I will only teach 5 classes, not 6; this will help reduce the work load in terms of grading papers, etc. etc. In addition, I have reduced the number of tournaments we are going to. Theoretically, this will open up my schedule for some so-called "personal" time to do things like ... Islands of Adventure! Jaxson's! Sleep! Breathe!

(2) Forgiving yourself: I dwell too much on the "little things," which would (I am sure) annoy Mary Wermuth to some degree; she of the mantra "Don't sweat the small stuff ... and it's all small stuff." I need to seriously loosen up and stop beating myself up over things that I have no control over (ah, the Serenity Prayer battle ...).

(3) Being eternally thankful: To be honest, until I am happy with myself, and forgive myself on a consistent basis, this may be difficult to achieve. I am thankful for the friends I have, for gainful employment, and for parents and family members that love and care for me. I suppose I am even "eternally" thankful for them, for my three nephews in Detroit, for having persevered through some rough times, and for - despite all the negativity that may be flowing through these words - being better off today than I was a few years ago. But ... I have a long way to go.

Now it is summer vacation - from the school job, at least. I plan to take some time this summer for myself, to relax a bit more than normal. Whether helping Alexandra Sencer move to O-town, doing the "Tour de Military Museums" with David Traill (hey, you never know), enjoying my godson's barmitzvah, or hitting Motown for a few baseball games and seeing family and friends, I intend to have a fun, relaxing and enjoyable respite from the rigors of everyday life I have, sadly, allowed myself to shape who I am. And, more importantly, to carry them into the next school year.

I suspect a few life changes may be in the works as well - nothing major, but enough so that I can start to enjoy life more and concentrate positively on rediscovering who I used to be.

Welcome To The Jungle!

Hello, and welcome to my new little slice of the Internet. My name is Paul Gaba, and it is an honor and a pleasure to greet you here.

This is not my first dabble into the world o' the blogger. I did this for a while when I had a MySpace page (which has since met its demise, along with the multitude of posts I contributed there), and I've inundated Facebook with them as well. I may very well see about transferring (or copying over) some of those previous blogs to this venue in the near future. We shall see.

If you want to get technical, I did quite a bit of blogging before the term "blog" even existed. Or before the Internet existed (depending on your sources). When I was a full-time journalist in college (1988) and professionally (1988-1994), I pounded out a weekly humorous opinion column for my newspaper employer of the moment. (They were "weekly" because we published once a week. Yeah!) Even though they were pre-Internet/pre-Blog, they were essentially the same thing: a method by which to express myself on the goings-on of the day, random observations, ways of venting and getting things off my chest, or just trying to make someone's life a bit happier. Or some combination thereof. I can't "transfer" these over to this forum, per se, but I may re-type them here (with original publication source and date included), to give you an idea of the warped sense of perception I had back in the day (which was, incidentally, back before "back in the day" was even a phrase!).

A bit about by background: Along with being a full-time journalist (see previous dates) at various newspapers in Michigan, I have been the assistant manager of a Detroit-area high school radio station (1995-99), a wedding DJ (1986-95), a part-time journalist in southeast Florida (2005-present), and a high school English teacher and debate coach (1999-present). At times one or more of these will rear their heads in some way, shape or form, hopefully in a positive way.

I hope you're comfortable; this may be a bumpy ride at times. So lean back in your favorite recliner, with a tall cool one of your choice by your side, and let's have some fun!

Retrospective 2003

January: Traveled with the Wellington Debate Team to compete at the Barkley Forum at Emory University; wind chill was minus-18 as our charter bus pulled into Atlanta. Students, mistaking “cold” with “white fluffy stuff” (which was not in evidence), cheered relentlessly. IRONY: It snowed, albeit briefly, in Vero Beach the same weekend. Go figure.

February: Aggressive hockey is back in town! Friends Jeff Falcon and Mark Mosesso fly in from Detroit for the NHL All-Star Game weekend (hosted by the Florida Panthers). Completing the quartet was David Traill. Highlights: Partied at Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor, raced go-carts at midnight, posed with Stanley (the Cup … duh!), bought bobbleheads, saw some awesome action on ice.

March: Celebrated my 39th birthday with a final hospital visit over month-long issues stemming from my unexplained (and still unexplainable) ability to have my trachea stop working for a few seconds on Valentine’s Day. Things I learned: (a) school district medical insurance policy needs better deductibles as part of the plan; (b) pulmonary function tests are worse than grading Kafkaesque essays; and (c) not breathing is a bad thing.

April: Kept breathing.

May: Professional month from hell, which in retrospect indicates to me that April’s lack of action was the calm before the hurricane. Due to major budget cuts and a new Class Size Reduction law, I was told on May 16 that my job was in jeopardy. (I wasn’t alone.) Made for a frustrating drive to cousin Kayla’s bat mitzvah in Tampa. Frustration was complicated on May 27 when, upon returning to Wellington from the Debate National Championships in Washington, DC over Memorial Day Weekend, I was told I wouldn’t be back at Wellington. That was followed the next day with news I would be retained after all, but wouldn’t have a debate program … then, that the program would be after-school only … then, that I could keep one debate class if I wanted to give up my planning period … which I did.

June: Traveled to Tampa again for cousin Ron’s (Kayla’s dad) b’nai mitzvah at the start of month. Analysis: use of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, etc. as reception music is very cool. Closed out the month with a drive to Lexington, Kentucky, for the three-week-long Lincoln Douglas Debate Coaches Institute. Found out that sister Miriam and bro-in-law Brian are expecting in February 2004. Also very cool.

July: Followed up my Kentucky stay with a drive north to Detroit for a stint as best man in my brother Charles’ marriage to Elisabeth. With (lots of) guidance from Miriam and Brian, I made sure not to screw up the toast. Spent time prior to the wedding visiting family and friends; spent time after the wedding starting (and continuing on) the Atkins Diet. Visited Ohio friends Chris and Ketra; helped Chris learn editing skills on his radio station’s audio production system.

August: After all the May education problems, the new school year started out OK. Teaching three senior English British Literature courses and three mixed varsity/novice debate courses. Yay!

September: Earned nickname “Wrong Way Gaba” (one of several nicknames, I might add) while driving debate students around Winston-Salem, NC during the Wake Forest “Earlybird” Tournament. Will not comment further, other than to say the van only went one direction down the road ...

October: Celebrated the anniversary of my move to an overly expensive apartment complex a year earlier (in wake of dual break-ins) with yet another move, this time because I wanted to. Now living in a 2/2 1300 square foot condo only two miles away from work.

November: Traveled to Philly for my cousin Lisa’s wedding. I have decided that Philly is the nation’s Most Patriotic City, due to a plethora of red, white and blue all over the place. I have also decided the Philly Ritz-Carlton is home of the nation’s Best Hot Chocolate with Butterscotch Schnapps.

December: Still in amazement over antics in my English classroom from the past few weeks, where a review of exams revealed that (a) Samuel Becket was named Archbishop of Canterbury by King Henry II, (b) all six of King Henry VIII’s wives were names Catherine, and (c) “Mr. Gaba Is Cool” was the name of one of Shakespeare’s plays. Correct answers: (a) Thomas a’Becket; (b) three named Catherine, two named Anne, and a Jane; (c) technically true, but not inked by the Bard.