Editor's note: blog stars is an occasional roundup of good reads from other ed blogs.
The EdFly Blog: Frivolous litigation earns dunce cap
As for Florida dumbing down education, as is alleged in the lawsuit, the state ranks first in the country in the percent of 2011 graduates who took an AP exam, sixth in the percent of graduates passing at least one AP exam, and fourth in improving the passing percentage since 2001.
An in-depth analysis by ProPublica last year praised Florida as being a leader in giving low-income students the same access to AP classes as affluent kids.
And while the state’s NAEP scores took a dip in 2011, it ranks second nationally in gains on the national assessments dating back to the 1990s.
In fact, by any measure, the state’s education system is light years ahead of the system that was in operation when Mills helped run Tallahassee. And the biggest beneficiaries have been the students who were routinely ignored back then. Full post here.
Sara Mead's Policy Notebook: This is why our current education debate is toxic
Richard Rothstein's American Prospect investigation into the details of Joel Klein's childhood (no, I'm not kidding here) is really not worth reading, but it unfortunately exemplifies two of the most toxic aspects of the current education reform conversation (fwiw it also contains some interesting information about the history of post-war public housing in NYC):
Personality over policy: The point of Rothstein's very long article seems to be that Joel Klein's education policy views are invalid because his childhood was less poor than it has sometimes been represented as being. At a surface level, this is idiotic. Whether Klein grew up in abject poverty or simply in circumstances much more humble than the financial and political status to which he has risen has absolutely nothing to do with whether the education policies he proposes work. Nor did Klein or anyone else ever claim himself as the sole data point for the power good teachers and schools can have on kids' lives. There's, um, actual research on this. (more…)
Former Florida House Speaker Jon Mills (pictured here) will now get his day in court, representing a group that has sued the state over both the funding and quality of public education. But the state Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday to let the suit move forward also invites a more enticing legal debate: Does the constitutional requirement of “a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools” mean that every school must look the same?
That question may sound facetious, but unfortunately has judicial grounding. In 2006, the state high court invalidated Opportunity Scholarships by rejecting “separate private systems parallel to and in competition with the free public schools.” And the court didn’t stop there. It went further, arguing that “uniformity” calls for consistency in school accreditation, teacher certification and education qualifications, background screening for employees, academic standards, and curriculum in reading and history.
The question of school variety and choice might not sound like fodder for a case that’s primarily about money, but give Mills credit for being open to all interpretations of high quality. “The mission,” he said when the case was first filed in 2009, “is for students to have a good educational opportunity and to succeed, and it seems to me we need more options and not less.”
That is clearly the direction in which Florida is moving. (more…)
