Hannah's Evaluation

Hannah has officially passed the third grade.  She had her evaluation yesterday and she did just fine.  Her evaluator--a friend of mine who teaches third grade--looked at all her work and then gave her a sample FCAT.  FCAT is the standardized tests that kids in Florida have to take at various grade levels in order to move on to the next grade.  Third grade is the first big year for the FCAT.   Hannah did great on the reading and okay on the math.  She had probably never learned half of what was asked.  There was probability, graphing, geometry, statistics. and it was all word problems.  There wasn't even one (that I saw) basic arithmetic problem.  In my opinion, kids in the third grade need to be learning to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.  When they have that down really well they can move on to these other things.  Instead the FCAT requires that they be able to read the word problem, pull out the information, and solve it or tell what operation they would use to solve it.  I am all for word problems but this test was really ridiculous.  In an effort to be politically (or culturally) correct they used a lot of really difficult to read names in the word problems--Hakim, Jamal, Jose, Phoebe, etc.  Just trying to read the names could stump and kid and start them feeling stressed and they haven't even gotten to the math yet.  I talked to my friend about this, I asked her how she had time to teach the kids basic arithmetic AND all the other stuff.  She basically said that there isn't time.  They pretty much have to teach the test, make sure the kids memorize how to do the different problems.  She said by the end of the year, very few have mastered the basic arithmetic and often don't really KNOW the other stuff either.  I was proud of Hannah and not at all discouraged by her lack of "passing" the math part of the FCAT.  She is actually really good at math and at word problems and can add, subtract, multiply, and divide.  I really do not like the FCAT and think it is the demise of our school system.  Teachers are so busy teaching the test that the kids are missing out on history, science, art, music, pe, etc.  The kids are stressed out--it's really just not a good thing.  Unfortunately, it's here to stay it seems.