FCAT: Trimming the Fat
Test scores underscore an absence of leadership.



Okay, the newest FCAT scores are out, so I guess it’s time to write something about how stupid the students of Duval County Schools are—right? That is the underlying theme of most media coverage on a year-by-year basis: a system of marginal performers balanced by exceptions presented by way of proving the rule. But we’re better than that. We feel, we understand, and we’re not going to pile on thousands of children just to avoid piling on the adults responsible for what everyone seems content to characterize as the chronic underperformance of Duval County Schools. Uh-uh.

I feel sometimes like a teacher myself in this occupation, in a room full of kids who will not listen. I can’t punish them when they’re bad or reward them when they’re good in any way that makes a difference in the long run. Back then, the problems facing our schools were clearer and easier to fix. The economy was in better shape and there was no burgeoning world war taking up our attention. It may now be too late to make any significant improvements to the system in time to save the current generation of students, but parents can take some comfort in knowing that the US military will soon be teaching their kids everything they need to know to survive in desert combat.

There was actually a lot of good news to come from the FCAT results. Many schools in the county have improved from last year (including a 28% increase in perfect scores), and even those that failed did very well in athletics. The two high schools that earned Fs this year, Raines and Ribault are holding up admirably under pressures more or less designed to put them in exactly the situation they’re in now: their best students are leaving, and those who remain have had been told by every media outlet in the county that they are inferior.

Since the worst-performing schools are those whose student bodies reflect the majority-black status of their surrounding neighborhoods, we aren’t likely to see them treated any more fairly than they have been in recent years. The situation at Raines and Ribault—which have scored Fs in five of the eight (cumulative) years since the FCAT began—only underscores the tragic absence of quality leadership in Jacksonville’s black community. They seem more concerned with making money for themselves than with ensuring a positive future for black children, and this has always been the case.

Parents of students who have excelled in underperforming schools should be happy for Jeb Bush and his zeal for vouchers, which has proven their best chance of moving onward and upward through a public-school system that, despite all the obvious good news, has a whole lot farther to go before any of its Board members should feel justified in seeking reelection.

Liberals who seek to blame No Child Left Behind for all this choose to ignore the fact that the private sector has done nothing to encourage excellence in our students. The teachers’ union has lost its soul by not going after the textbook companies whose stupid and greedy profiteering has left kids with no reliable curriculum. Instead, they are fed a view of society based upon their value as consumers, rather than producers.

The students of Duval County have had no role in designing the kind of school system in which they come up, despite my call to rectify this condition exactly five years ago. No substantive steps have been taken to remove the poisons fed to students, nor to counter the equally poisonous influence of Viacom and Clear Channel, which encourages kids to be as vain and vacuous as possible, so as to make them more receptive to the swag pushed by advertisers. That is the number-one problem facing the students of today: all the high-minded talk coming from the bureaucracy is contradicted by everything else the kids hear inside or outside the classroom.

The sad part of all this is that I honestly believe that no one really cares whether today’s youth are prepared for the future or not. We want the best for our own kids, but “kids” in the abstract generate no traction. The Duval County School Board loves to talk about accountability—accountability for schools, for teachers and students—but who holds them accountable? That is a question for which there are no answers forthcoming.

shelton hull
sdh666@hotmail.com
June 24, 2004