St. Lucie fights against the FCAT again
May 22nd, 2009 by Cara FitzpatrickFORT PIERCE — If any school district knows the FCAT is a fickle lover, it’s St. Lucie County.
Improve in writing and watch your math scores drop. Improve in math and watch science take a dip.
This year, St. Lucie’s third-graders improved in math only to see their reading scores drop three percentage points, erasing the previous year’s gains.
“We’re back down to where we were the year before,” said Troy Ingersoll, a school board member.
A slight drop in third-grade reading scores might not seem like a big deal, but it is. Scores on the reading test, unlike math, are used to determine if a child moves on to fourth grade. And how third-graders fare on the test may be an indicator of what lies ahead for the district’s scores. Already, school officials are regrouping, looking for ways to correct the problem.
Superintendent Michael Lannon, whose district improved to a B last year from a C, said a committee was formed Thursday to analyze successful schools and look for ways to replicate them elsewhere. A consultant who has seen improvements at three schools will work with more schools next year, he said.
One of those is Lakewood Park Elementary, which, despite an 84 percent rate of poverty, has enjoyed steady improvements in recent years. This year, third-graders gained eight percentage points in reading, with 72 percent at grade level or above.
Principal Scott Neil said he does frequent assessments, encouraging students to track their own progress.
“We don’t wait until March to make adjustments,” he said. “We have goals for every child, every class and every grade,” he said.
Improvement in scores is a delicate balancing act, particularly for a county like St. Lucie. Unlike its neighbors in Martin or Indian River counties, St. Lucie is larger, poorer and more diverse. More than half of students live in poverty — about 20,000 students — and an uptick of immigration has brought a mix of languages into the schools.
“We have so many needs to divert resources that we run out of resources,” Lannon said.
This year, third-graders picked up four percentage points in math, with 73 percent earning a grade level score or above. In reading, 63 percent scored at grade level or above compared to 66 percent last year and 63 percent in 2007.
Students earn scores in levels one to five, with three or above considered grade level. A level one score is considered failing.
Only nine of 27 elementary or kindergarten to eighth-grade schools showed improvements in the percentages of students scoring at or above grade level in reading. Nine schools had more than a quarter of its third-graders fail the reading test.
But Lannon, while looking for possible problems revealed by the results, warned against reading too much into one grade’s test results.
“We don’t want to go over the edge with just third-grade results,” he said.
Tags: fcat, Fort Pierce, Schools, St. Lucie County
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May 22nd, 2009 at 4:52 pm
somebody shoot the FCAT and put us out of our misery.
August 12th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
I agree with PBC Teacher, this F-Cat is not only a nightmare for the students but for the parents too. My daughter will start the third grade this year and she is STRESSING BIG TIME. My daughter is only 8 years old and she is stressed, I wonder what this will have on her in her later years. This is utterly ridiculous, I am going to email as many people in what ever high office I can. I mean it is sickening for an eight year old child to stress when she should be being a normal child. It brings tears to my eyes to see her go through this, these people who write these laws and tests do not know what these CHILDREN go through. People we need to take action, ASAP