I have many opinions concerning FCAT.  As an educator, it has inspired, if not demanded, that I find more effective strategies for teaching.  It has improved our educational system in Florida.  It has "weeded" out many of the "bad" teachers.  However, I feel it also has many faults.  As a teacher, I feel extremely pressured to prepare my students for FCAT...FCAT, FCAT, FCAT...it's all I can think about, and sometimes I feel my boundaries with FCAT are so rigid that I lose the creativity that I could bring to the curriculum.  There is a huge increase in the high school drop out rate.  Why?  FCAT assesses the end of the year curriculum, but it is given 2 - 3 months before school is out.  There are few, if any, loopholes for kids to graduate.  Yes, every good teacher believes with passion that every student can learn.  That is the basis of the No Child Left Behind law.  However, just like children walk at different ages, grow teeth at different ages, and learn to talk at different ages, many skills and concepts taught in the curriculum are developemental and/or contingent upon previously mastered skills.  Assuming that every fourth grade child will be reading and calculating on grade level is like assuming that every child will walk or talk  at the same time.  Accountability is a good thing.  It keeps me on my toes and makes me strive to be a better teacher.  I don't know that FCAT is the answer to all of Florida's educational woes.  Does a test like this have to cost millions of dollars to produce and evaluate?  Can't the state come up with a beginning of the year assessment of state/national benchmarks?  Then reassess those same benchmarks with a posttest?  A test that won't cost millions of dollars to produce?