The FCAT Debacle

Even if the FCAT were as hard as the SAT/ACT, teaching to the test has the same value. If we are teaching to the FCAT, or if we are not, and the scores are declining, this has to be a clue.  The education factory, the mass education assembly line is broken.  (See: )

We have to ask how does the FCAT help students? Have you ever heard your student explain how he or she made something in school and from the explanation you could tell she was fully alive in the learning.  Too often this explanation is of a video game, sports, or anything but high school. Do not miss the point. All these activities have value even great value. What makes students fully alive is not boring stuff we can lookup on Google, but failure as a reward for the challenge, curiosity, innovation and creativity of trying again. Trying again and again are steps to discovery.

Education as a conformity machine makes trying again proof you failed to conform. 

Learning is discovery and discovery needs failure are a learning opportunity. This is the antithesis of the mass education assembly line that holds high standardized test scores as the pinnacle of success. How does this help students make something great?

We want our students to make something, not just anything, but something great.  We want our students to feel free to fail as the try again to make something: a Name, a Difference, and Money. Making great standardized tests and great standardized test-takers will not get us to where we want to be. We must change the education paradigm from factory bells and conformity to rational sifting, that is, creative thinking that inspires students to be as fully alive in their learning as they are in their play.