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School funding. Gov. Rick Scott proposes to spend $1.2 billion more on public schools next year. Coverage from Tampa Bay Times, South Florida Sun Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Lakeland Ledger, Associated Press, News Service of Florida, Naples Daily News, StateImpact Florida, Panama City News Herald. More money will prove lawmakers care, writes Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano.

Teacher evaluations. Senate President Don Gaetz reiterates his concerns about the new system: "We have to be able to win this debate at the PTO meeting and the school advisory council, and we haven't won the debate." News Service of Florida. Gaetz is right about taking more time with teacher evals and other reforms, editorializes the Panama City News Herald.

Vouchers and creationism. SchoolZone notes a new website: Say No to Creationist Vouchers.

Jeb conspiracy. Exposed!!! Orlando Sentinel. Gradebook. The Answer Sheet. The Nation.

ALEC. Its latest annual report card gives Florida an education policy grade of B+ and a performance rank of 12. 

Educator conduct. A former Palm Beach County principal gets 10 years in prison for soliciting sex from a minor, reports the Palm Beach Post and South Florida Sun Sentinel. After a four-year battle, a Palm Beach County teacher accused of harassing and threatening fellow employees may finally be fired, reports the Sun Sentinel. (more…)

ALEC to remain neutral on Common Core. Report from EdWeek. As we noted last week, Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education weighed in against the ALEC resolution. Thumbs up from Checker Finn. More from EdFly Blog.

Speaking of Common Core … Education Week writes about the dispute between the Florida Department of Education and a private vendor over a website that was supposed to prepare teachers and students for the new standards.

Teacher evals. The FEA holds a press conference to step up its criticism. Coverage from Orlando Sentinel, Gradebook, The Florida Current, First Coast News.

Agenda for ed conference. The fifth annual Excellence in Action National Summit on Education Reform, put on by the Foundation for Excellence in Education, is next week. Full agenda here.

Private school problems. Both the Bradenton Herald and Sarasota Herald-Tribune take a look at issues with The Prep Academy.

Tony Bennett’s shocking loss in Indiana has highlighted a deep and long-festering rift among some ed reformers over adoption of Common Core academic standards. Some observers pinned the loss on Republicans who see Common Core as federal intrusion tied to President Obama rather than a voluntary, state-led effort – and who saw Bennett as too cozy with it.

From Florida, one prominent Common Core advocate is pushing back.

In a letter last week to the American Legislative Exchange Council board of directors, Patricia Levesque, executive director of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, politely takes issue with a draft resolution that would revoke a state’s adoption of Common Core. She calls the standards a “crucial foundation” for reform and says while they’ll better prepare students for a global economy, they “do not dictate what textbooks must be used or how a district’s curriculum should be set up.”

“Resolutions like this one,” concludes the letter, dated a day after the election, “draw attention and resources away from what’s important – properly implementing the improved standards and working together to provide a high quality education to all students.”

In a blog post two days later, Levesque is far more edgy. (more…)

When the Wall Street Journal blessed 2011 as the Year of School Choice, few advocates for public and private school options passed up the chance to celebrate the benediction. But the American Legislative Exchange Council knows that rhapsody will take the education reformer only so far. ALEC’s latest annual report card on American K-12 education, released this week, doubles as guidebook for the reformer who prefers “broad, rather than incremental, reform,” as authors Matthew Ladner and Dan Lips write. It’s a brazen assignment, but the Journal was right. It’s been a brazen year.

Moves to enhance tenure reform, merit pay, and transparency in public school performance all receive praise from ALEC, but it’s the “roaring comeback of parental choice” that signals the promise for academic gains. When Ladner and Lips note that low-income students in Washington, D.C., have made outsized leaps on the fourth- and eighth-grade NAEP reading and math exams, they point to an expanded public and private school market, combined with an audacious array of policy changes that recognized district teachers by their merit and eliminated administrative blockades to innovation. “Hall of Shame members ought to rethink their improvement strategies,” the authors conclude, referring to the bottom-dwelling states that have stumbled in their NAEP gains and, which incidentally, have done little to enhance choice, tenure reform and transparency.

Indiana has joined Florida as ALEC’s gold-standard state, adopting an A-through-F school-grading system, limiting collective bargaining among teachers and establishing what will ultimately be the most expansive school voucher program in the nation. Indiana's comprehensive reforms now constitute ALEC's model omnibus bill. And, Ladner and Lips assert, "reformers should study that model bill carefully." But they don't note that the state's testing regimen will capture both public and publicly financed private school students, a standard of transparency that proponents and skeptics alike will scrutinize heavily and a standard that continues to be divisive in the choice movement.

The authors, too, are largely silent on the development of common core standards and assessments, now adopted by nearly every state in the wake of the Race to the Top strategies that embraced many of the reforms lauded in the ALEC report. That silence is not surprising, considering ALEC is one of the most vocal opponents to the common core model. But the gold-standard states of Florida and Indiana are among those that have adopted that model, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a revered figure in the report card, implored ALEC last summer to view the standards "as a floor from which states can build a framework of high-quality and rigorous coursework that equips all students with the knowledge and skills for success in life."

The authors conclude the report by looking ahead to the promise of digital learning, which they argue is "a potentially game-changing reform that should appeal to a broad and diverse coalition of parents and constituents." They're right to call it game-changing, but the coalition won't be as easy to build as they claim. Just ask The New York Times. But it might just be true, as they assert, that we're at the "end of the beginning in the battle for K-12 reform." Such a coalition is more conceivable now than ever.