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A debate has been raging in education policy over the use of standardized tests for accountability purposes. This discussion is very heated in Florida, where results on the state's high- stakes test are used to decide whether students graduate high school and whether vouchers are offered to students at chronically failing public schools.

Opponents claim that high-stakes tests force educators to ''teach to the test'' by abandoning real learning for the memorization of a narrow set of skills and test-taking strategies. But a new study by the Manhattan Institute's Education Research Office demonstrates that this concern is unfounded: The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test effectively measures whether students are acquiring more general knowledge and not just a narrow set of skills to pass the test.

Though educators complain that they are forced to change their curricula and teaching techniques to focus exclusively on getting their students to pass the FCAT, it is important to realize that this ''teaching to the test'' is a bad thing only if the test does not effectively measure a broad set of knowledge.

Teaching to the test can be a positive development if it means that teachers are being guided to teach the general knowledge that we expect students to acquire while in school, like learning to read and do math.

Most discussions of high-stakes testing and teaching to the test fail to make this distinction between the negative version, in which students are drilled only on narrow skills, and the positive version, in which the test guides teachers and schools to teach the general knowledge that we think students need to learn.

Despite the fact that the system is designed to reward public schools for excellence in teaching, many educators and community members have criticized the program, claiming that the program takes funding from schools which need it most. It has also been criticized by many students and teachers because the schools put too much emphasis on the FCAT and not enough on preparing students for the real world. The parochial and private schools of excellence, recognized under federal guidelines separately from state guidelines, and proclaimed as superior by the Federal Government, in fact receive no public funds and are exempt from requiring their students to take the FCAT.

The FCAT tests have also come under fire from education groups and parents for encouraging teachers to teach students how to pass a test, rather than of teaching students the fundamental material in the core subjects such as English. Another point of criticism on the FCAT is that all students of the same grade take the same test, despite the fact that different students are enrolled in different courses. To compensate for this, in many schools, teachers are directed to cover FCAT skills, regardless of what subject they are supposed to be covering. According to one Orange County principal, world history and physical education teachers at his school cover English FCAT objectives, such as "finding the main idea".

The logic behind the grading system reflects the state's intention to reward consistently underperforming schools that show even slight progress on the FCAT in an attempt to counter the disadvantages these schools have experienced in the past. But critics believe the system will wind up hurting those schools that report high scores because they have little room for improvement.

Reliance on this one-size-fits-all approach has upset officials at consistently high performing schools because they say the whole assessment and performance picture is not taken into account. And parents confused by inconsistencies in the grading system don't feel they receive an accurate appraisal of how well their community's schools are performing.

Disadvantages

The issue for education has been, and will continue to be, how to overcome the disadvantages that are evident in the homes of our poorer students. Schools with a high percentage of poor students and recent immigrants do poorly on the FCAT. Those students come from homes where the parents must work constantly just to put a roof over their heads and food on their tables. They come from homes where the parents themselves probably did poorly in school, and don't have a strong educational ethic.

And yet, despite the time, despite the money, despite the pontificating from politicians and the promises to Leave No Child Behind, every year the poorest among us follow an inevitable path, a path that leads them down a road that they will take their children someday unless they can be raised up from poverty.

Our schools are doing the best they can but they can't reach