Seminole 4th-grader who once didn’t speak English aces all 3 FCAT exams
Yazielis Perez didn’t speak English when she started kindergarten, but shewas the only Seminole County student this spring to get perfect scores on all three of the FCAT exams she took as a fourthgrader.
“It’s amazing. I’m really proud of her,” her mother, Inneabell Ramirez, said Tuesday.
She and her husband, Aziel Perez, moved with their daughter from Puerto Rico to Seminole County in 2009, hoping to find a better education and better schools.
“We found it; we really did,” Ramirez said.
State and local officials say that it is rare for students to earn perfect scores on more than one of the tests, let alone three or more, in the same year.
In Orange County, Lake Silver Elementary student Chloe Smiles achieved perfect scores on thirdgrade FCAT reading and math this year. District officials in Orange and Lake weren’t immediately able to say whether there were others. In2012, Gabby Erwin of Bridgewater Middle School in Orange County earned perfect scores on four FCAT exams.
Yazielis, who goes by Yazi, first attended a private kindergarten, where she developed her English skills. Then she attended public schools — first Lawton Elementary, then Red Bug and now Keeth, where she is in the gifted program.
Although she was always successful in school, her perfect FCAT results in reading, writing and math were a surprise, said Yazi, 11.
“I felt like I tried my hardest,” she said, and credited her teachers and the school principal with helping her be prepared. But she said she “didn’t imagine” she would be a top scorer for the county. A self-starter whose favorite subject is math, she said she would like to work with animals or teach when she gets older. She also likes to sing gospel, compose songs about her life and create videos that she sometimes posts to a private YouTube channel.
She said that speaking both Spanish and English helps her both at church, where services are in Spanish, and in her everyday life. “I like meeting different people, so it helps to speak two languages,” she said.
Her mother said that whatever her daughter does is fine with her, as long as she finishes college. “She’s very positive,’’ Ramirez said. “She knows she can do it.”