Florida Trend | Florida's Business Authority

Who Said That?

" We can’t do what we’re paid to do, which is teach."

-- Janel Jackson-Lefebvre, a seventh-grade science teacher at Hialeah Gardens Middle

It’s testing season at Dr. Michael Krop High School. Which means it’s also movie season.

Each morning for the last three weeks as teachers prepare to administer Florida’s standardized tests, scores of displaced students shuffle into the auditorium where the day’s matinee is projected onto a big, pull-down screen. Films include Disney’s Frozen, Fast and Furious, Life According to Sam, and — sigh — repeats.

“I’ve been going almost every day for the past month for every single third period,” said Sam Apel, a 16-year-old junior whose accounting classroom at the Northeast Miami-Dade school has been turned into a testing computer lab. “It’s horrible. Miserable.”

The seasonal cinema — which one student referred to on Twitter as “auditorium days” — is an unintended consequence of Florida’s high-stakes testing program.

Read more at the Miami Herald.