You're totally right about the five paragraph essay not providing a worthwhile framework for our students' writing skills. However, I believe that evaluators for statewide writing tests are specifically trained to target these kinds of formulaic essays and fail them! There is a move to grade these essays on their ability to express sound ideas with good reasoning that are organized efficiently and are interesting due to word choice, sentence fluency, voice, and conventions. Transitions are also highly important so as to increase the flow of the work.
I always tell my students that four paragraphs are just as good as five, so long as they are well-developed, reasoned, and interesting. As teachers we need to continue creating better thinkers as we teach writing, and quality writing will inevitably follow. As you say, "the signs are what is important."
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