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Wednesday, March 7, 2001

On again, off again test answers

FOOTNOTE | By Mark Lane

You are almost ready for the big game. You know it's the big game because coach has been telling everyone this is going to be the big game. All year long.

Win the big game and there's glory for everyone. Do poorly, and your team, your coach and even your town will look bad.

Do really, really bad, and someone will actually pay people to leave for other teams. They might not let you graduate.

There have been pep rallies. Pep talks. Drills and exhortations and threats. A lot is riding on this, son.

So, it's almost game time. But coach comes out and says, "Wait, this isn't the big game, after all. This is more of a practice scrimmage. Do well, but don't sweat it."

You don't know whether to feel relieved or let down. But you head to the field when coach runs up yet again and shouts, "Forget everything I said, you gotta win this one. This is the big game I've been telling you about all year. And you need to win by a certain margin. I just can't tell you what that margin is yet.

"Now go out there, and play your very best."

This is Florida. Nobody would let a school play football this way.

It would be demoralizing. You would be sabotaging yourself. You'd even feel a little silly.

But this is roughly the approach the state is taking toward the FCATs.

All year long, the schools' choice of lessons has centered on the state's standardized tests. Kids in fourth grade have mastered the art of darkening in the correct circle -- a skill that might save their state great embarrassment when they grow up and vote. They have learned the arts of finding the plausible two multiple choices and taking your best guess. (Hint: be wary of sentences that contain absolutes: all, every, none ... they are never correct.)

Kickball time, field trips, reading books, folding paper into something that looks just like a bird . . . all have fallen by the wayside because they are not in the test.

I recently spotted a newspaper ad for a private school that emphasized that in its FCAT-free environment, students would be able to learn things instead of being drilled for test-taking.

Tenth-graders have been asked to contemplate the ignominy of being cast adrift in the world economy without a high school diploma if they don't shape up their FCAT scores in the next couple years. (The state is still determining what that passing number will be. Standards are important, even if you can't tell anyone what they are.)

High-schoolers have learned how to write three-paragraph answers to essay questions following a pattern as undeviating as an Italian sonnet.

Which brings us to the present problem.

In order to make the FCAT less of what testing cynics call "multiple guess," the test includes essay sections.

Essay answers cannot be run through a tabulator and graded. It takes time and human graders. Because FCAT scores were late coming back last year, the state Department of Education decided not to count the essay answers toward the FCAT's scores this year. To speed up grading.

After all that preparation and drills in classrooms around Florida, Education Commissioner Charlie Crist told educators and kids three weeks ago, don't worry, essay answers won't count.

But this week he announced that he reversed that decision. Sort of.

The test is next week in most schools. Yet it was not announced until Tuesday which parts of the test will count and which won't.

The all-important school rankings will be figured strictly on the basis of the multiple-choice tests. The written-out answers won't count.

Students, on the other hand, will get only the multiple choice part of their scores before school ends and then get the essay part in summer.

So it looks as though the essay answers will at least count for something. But what's coming out of Tallahassee has been strictly multiple choice.

No, make that multiple guess.

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