ABCDE: A Found Footage Experimental Documentary

In April of 2010, Florida legislators passed a bill (SB 6 in the senate and HB 7189 in the house) designed to improve public education K-12. Among other things, the bill proposed that schools pay teachers according to, in large part, how well their students scored on standardized tests such as the FCAT. Fortunately, Governor Charlie Christ vetoed the bill. While this video is not exactly a work of activism, its chief aim is to dramatize (via experimental video techniques such as looping and repetition) the uncanny experience of schools in which standardized testing has become an "evaluation machine" gone crazy.

More specifically, having had some time to reflect on the video, I see the video playing upon several routine aspects of the year I spent teaching English at a Florida public high school: passing out worksheet upon worksheet of FCAT practice materials, making copies upon copies of those materials, enduring the gossip and complaints of fellow teachers during faculty meetings, watching generic teacher training videos at mandatory workshops (after which we teachers, in place of any real discussion, had to complete the same type of worksheets we had to give our students), and, most of all, pacing around the room proctoring students as they stared blankly at FCAT questions and bubble sheets on a weekly basis.