FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

FCAT Abuse: The Real Jeb Bush Legacy to Florida and Its Schools

Lake Mary, Florida
11-13-2006

Because of inappropriate and abusive use of student FCAT scores, Jeb Bush and his associates have left a pungent legacy to Florida and its schools.  The legacy is:

   a climate of punishment, fear and public ridicule for youth who
   struggle with school learning,

   the life destruction of nearly half of Florida’s youth who drop out
   of school between grade eight and grade eleven,

   schools that are forced to limit their curriculum in order to teach to
   the FCAT,

   a mandated grade-three retention law that the state’s own data have
   shown to be a failure because students don’t catch up, and
   the long term impact is always lower levels of long-term learning
   for most students.

   increasingly larger numbers of youth two or more years older then
   school grade peers and who soon hate school and become disruptive,

   a skyrocketing youth crime rate tied to youth marked as school
   failures by the Bush program,

   major losses of qualified teachers who become disillusioned and
   leave the field,

   distorted increases in student test scores that give inflated impressions
   of improvements in learning,

   large increases in the use of state tax dollars to support for-profit
   private schools that are exempt from accountability,

   teachers who reject a cash for high test scores policy because they
   know scores reflect students’ family income rather than teaching quality,

   the long term economic demise of Florida because the future of
   any state or country is tied to providing an optimal education for
   all of its youth.

Who will listen to the cries of the poor and those who struggle to keep up?
When will political leaders and their press attend to the needs of all Floridians and their children?

It is time for the Orlando Sentinel, similar big business controlled publications and other members of Bush’s rally squad to regain their senses, remove their tunnel-vision glasses and admit the truth.  Although Florida voters may not have reacted as strongly as those in other regions of the country, the attack of the privileged on the middle and lower income working class has got to stop.

Robert Lange, Retired
Professor of Educational Research
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