Retention rules: Manatee County school officials say they will not consider a student's portfolio to justify a promotion to fourth grade if the student has not taken the Florida Standards Assessments test or a state-approved alternative. They say the state Department of Education supports their position. Bradenton Herald. Even while school districts are threatening third-graders with retention because they didn't take the state testing or an alternative, Florida law allows the use of a portfolio as an exemption to testing. Gradebook. Parents in the opt-out movement are headed for a showdown with Manatee County school administrators. Bradenton Times.

Legal fees rapped: The state spent $3.7 million for outside counsel to defend against the lawsuit that alleged Florida failed its constitutional mandate to provide a quality education for all public school students. A circuit judge dismissed the suit. Now one of those groups bringing it, Fund Education Now, is criticizing the state for that expense. The Florida Senate and House split the legal fees because the suit named Senate President Andy Gardiner and House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, as well as the state board and Education Commissioner Pam Stewart. A Gardiner aide says the Orlando Republican is “certainly comfortable with this investment of taxpayer dollars.” Politico Florida.

School crowding: If the courts rule that the Florida Tax Credit Scholarships are unconstitutional, as the Florida Education Association alleges, the state's already crowded schools might have to quickly absorb another 78,000 students. That could cause problems in some districts. Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, administers the program. Tampa Bay Times.

Construction costs: School districts spend more on buildings using the construction manager-at risk approach than the traditional method of design-bid-build, according to a study by Clemson University researchers. The cost per square meter was $192 for the construction manager approach, and $148 with design-bid-build. The conclusion is based on a study of 137 school projects in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Engineering News-Record.

New schools planned: The Orange County School District is planning to spend up to $3 billion to build 16 schools in the next nine years to accommodate growth in the student population. Orlando Sentinel. The Palm Beach County School District is applying for a grant that could lead to the creation of an arts middle school in Boynton Beach and several other magnet programs at other schools. The grant from the U.S. Department of Education is worth $12 million over three years. Five schools would share the money. Palm Beach Post. (more…)

Tax credit scholarships. Creative Loafing gives Charlie Crist's "evolution" on tax credit scholarships some ink after the Miami Herald story about his refusal to denounce the FSBA/FEA suit to kill them.

School choice. Private schools still serve the public good, writes William Mattox of the James Madison Institute, in an op-ed for Hernando Today. Watchdog.org notes that Fund Education Now's Kathleen Oropeza filed a motion to have the judge in the adequacy/funding/choice suit recuse herself because of Catholic ties, but doesn't note the judge granted the request.

Charter schools. The state Board of Education is moving ahead with creation of standard contracts for charter schools. Gradebook. Things are quiet in the simmering dispute between the Hillsborough County School District and Charter Schools USA. Gradebook. Duval County School Board members raise concerns about the performance of schools serving at-risk students, including several charter schools. WJCT.

Florida's progress. Florida gets A's in 3 of 11 categories in a new report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - in parental options, data quality and academic achievement for low-income and minority students.

School spending. StateImpact Florida writes up concerns that black-owned businesses aren't getting their fair share of contracts from the Miami-Dade County School District.

Testing. The Alachua County superintendent offers qualified support for the kindergarten teacher who refuses to administer a standardized test for diagnostic purposes. Gainesville Sun.

Teachers. Tension continues between the Pasco district and teachers union over planning time. Tampa Bay Times.

9/11. Middle school students in Manatee learn about victim advocate dogs. Bradenton Herald.

The plaintiffs in a wide-ranging lawsuit that challenges multiple aspects of Florida's education system argue that the current judge should be disqualified from hearing the case because of her involvement with Catholic organizations.

The lawsuit, which we've written about before, attacks school choice programs and other policies while making a sweeping argument that the state has not lived up to its constitutional obligation to support public schools. (Its targets include the state's tax credit scholarship program, which this blog's co-host, Step Up For Students, is authorized to administer.)

Kathleen Oropeza, of the group Fund Education Now, is now among the most outspoken plaintiffs. She points out in court papers filed last week that the judge, Angela Dempsey, is on the board of a Northwest Florida arm of Catholic Charities and has spoken at a Catholic school in Tallahassee.

The first version of Oropeza's motion to disqualify Dempsey drew a strongly worded response from the state's lawyers, and has been criticized on other blogs, which argued the judge was being singled out because of her religious affiliations.

That criticism was making the rounds when Oropeza filed an updated motion on Tuesday. The new filing is stripped of references to a "Catholic strategy" to support voucher programs around the county, and no longer mentions comments a member of the Catholic clergy made during a television appearance.

Oropeza has maintained all along that she is not asking for the judge's recusal based on the Dempsey's religious beliefs. But Jason Bedrick of the Cato Institute summed up her original  argument this way:

The judge belongs to a Catholic charity and has spoken at a Catholic school, the local Catholic Conference took a position in the original lawsuit, and a cardinal in another state said nice things about school choice on TV, therefore the anti-school choice activists want her to recuse herself. In other words, they want her to recuse herself because she’s Catholic.

The updated filing notes Dempsey's involvement with local Catholic Charities, and says the president of the national Catholic Charities organization is also involved with a separate group that put out a policy paper supporting school choice programs in 2011. It notes the judge spoke at a recent event hosted by a Tallahassee Catholic school. Some students at the school participate in school choice programs.

Based on those relationships, "Plaintiff does not believe the Judge can be impartial in determining whether Florida’s private voucher programs are unconstitutional," the updated court papers state.

Part of the response by the state's lawyers to her original motion is still worth quoting at length, with some emphasis added.

(more…)

Editor's note: This post first appeared as an op-ed in the Tampa Tribune. Step Up For Students, which administers the state's tax credit scholarship program, co-hosts this blog.

Eileen Segal is a gracious Florida PTA president who welcomed to her annual conference last summer a contingent of low-income parents who take advantage of a state scholarship for their children.

So she was speaking from the heart in a crowded House committee room last month when she said: “What you’re doing here today is very sad; it hurts my heart. Parents should not fight against parents. We all need to work together because we all want the same thing for our children — the best-quality education.”

Eileen is right, and yet she was part of a PTA group that had come to the Legislature to condemn the educational option that parents of 60,000 of the state’s poorest students have chosen this year. The audience that day was crowded with scholarship parents and their children, who in some cases sat next to PTA parents who stood on the other political side.

The PTA is not alone in this regard. A group called Parents Across Florida has written rather viciously about how the Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income children should be abandoned, even arguing that “vouchers actually strip away parents’ ultimate choice” and that parents want only neighborhood schools and “don’t want to be forced to shop around.” A group called Fund Education Now, which is led by three women who have played a constructive role in fighting for greater investment, has called the legislative effort to expand the scholarship to more underprivileged children “shameless.”

This jarring juxtaposition is hard to miss and harder to explain.

The general politics of school choice is relatively clear. Many of the established education groups reflexively oppose initiatives that are viewed as Republican priorities, which is why Democrats — even those who have supported help for low-income students in the past — are apt to run to the other corner. School boards see it as their mission to fight any program that reduces enrollment in the schools they operate, and the Florida Education Association continues to fight any option whose teachers are not represented by the union. But do parents really have to fight against each other? (more…)

Editor's note: This post first appeared as an op-ed in today's Tallahassee Democrat.

Florida is looking to let 5,700 more underprivileged children attend a private school on scholarship next year, and yet some of the opponents are making it sound like a form of educational Armageddon.

In her Wednesday My View, Fund Education Now co-founder Kathleen Oropeza, whose group plays an important role in pushing for genuine investment in public education, used the Tax Credit Scholarship expansion bill as a rhetorical punching bag. It is “an unprecedented, shameless raid on our most sacrosanct revenue stream — the Florida sales and use tax” or “the largest expansion of private religious-school vouchers in state history” or “sticking taxpayers with the $2 billion tab.” The scholarship program has “zero accountability” and “offers no proof the children are learning.”

These would be heady accusations if they were true. None is.

For the record, the bill that is headed to the House floor will increase the tax credit cap next year, $358 million, by 8.3 percent and by 3.5 percent in the fifth year. For each of the next five years, the cap increase possible under current law would be bumped up by $30 million. Add those all together and you get $150 million, not $2 billion. This bill certainly will help families that have been shut out under the current cap, but it by no means makes history.

The “shameless raid” on sales taxes speaks to a provision that added a sixth tax source against which corporations could claim dollar-for-dollar tax credits. The pool of potential sales tax credits is certainly larger than any of the existing five, but that’s immaterial because the sources are collectively governed by one tax credit cap. Here’s the kicker, though: The sales tax credit has been removed. No bill currently under consideration contains it.

The assertion that there is “no proof the children are learning” ignores the six annual testing reports issued to date by the state Department of Education. Students on the scholarship are required to take nationally norm-referenced tests, and the reports have consistently issued two findings: (1) The students who choose the scholarship are the lowest academic performers from the public schools they leave behind, and (2) scholarship students are achieving the same gains in reading and math annually as students of all income levels. Senate President Don Gaetz has raised a legitimate question about whether scholarship students should take a state, rather than national, test; but the state has plenty of proof about academic performance. (more…)

After a brief stall, Florida students and teachers are again making nationally notable gains on a closely watched test.

Released Thursday, the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, better known as “the nation’s report card,” show Florida students making solid growth between 2011 and 2013 on three of four tests that are used to compare achievement from state to state.

The NAEP reading and math tests are given every other year to representative samples of fourth- and eighth-graders in all 50 states.

Fueled by the performance of low-income and minority students, Florida was one of only four states that made statistically significant score gains on both the eighth-grade reading and eighth-grade math tests. It was also one of only seven states that showed a statistically significant increase in the percentage of students scoring at or above the basic level on fourth-grade reading, with a jump from 71 to 75 percent. (See charts below for the Florida and U.S. trend lines.)

The improved scores are "an example of what can be accomplished when we focus on what is important," Florida Education Commissioner Pam Stewart said in a written statement.

The latest results will have academic repercussions in the Sunshine State, a national leader in ed reform for more than a decade, and, maybe, political and legal ones. For embattled ed reformers, they bring a sigh of relief. For critics, they bring more evidence, despite oft-repeated arguments, that Florida public schools continue to improve faster than schools just about anywhere.

Here’s the context:

Between the late 1990s and 2009, Florida was arguably the national pacesetter on NAEP progress, moving from the bottom tier of states on all four core tests to the middle tier or better on three of them. It is impossible to sort out which factors led to rising trend lines, but Florida’s escape from the national cellar coincided with the sweeping policy changes ushered in by former Gov. Jeb Bush. Generally, the changes stressed higher standards, expanded school choice and top-down regulatory accountability. More specifically, they included school grades, private school vouchers, third-grade retention and an intense focus on literacy in early grades. Over the second half of that span, Florida also modestly shrunk class sizes and rolled out a popular, voluntary pre-kindergarten program, both prompted by voter-approved amendments to the state constitution.

Then came 2011. (more…)

With Florida now spending less per student than it did six years ago and less than at least three-fourths of the states, there is plausible case to be made for giving public education a raise. But Kathleen McGrory’s recent story on the status of a 2009 education adequacy lawsuit is a reminder that fiscal beauty is often in the eye of the beholder.

Let’s parse two of the claims in the suit:

The state is not putting up its fair share. In Florida, K-12 public education is funded by a combination of local and state taxes under a formula known as the Florida Education Finance Program. The complaint, filed four years ago, noted the state portion had dropped from 62 to 44 percent over the previous nine years. But that dramatic trend has made a similarly dramatic turn. This year, the state portion is back up to 57 percent – 58 percent if you count the state money spent on a scholarship for low-income students. This should ostensibly satisfy one of the major claims in the lawsuit. But the plaintiffs, which include Citizens for Strong Schools and Fund Education Now, are not likely be satisfied. The reason is the amount spent per student has remained basically unchanged – $6,873 in 2009-10 and $6,779 in 2013-14.

Charter schools and other options should be held to the same standards. It’s not entirely clear why a lawsuit aiming to enforce a constitutional provision requiring “adequate provision” for a “high quality” school system would take aim at learning options that are increasingly popular with Florida parents. But one of the attorneys, Neil Chonin, told McGrory that an important principle is at stake: “Our position is that there should be an even playing field.”

In a suit about financial resources, that’s a curious line to draw. (more…)

The new piece by Michelle Malkin on Jeb Bush, Tony Bennett and education reform in the Sunshine State is a touch heavy on hasty generalizations. The most jarring may be the way Malkin lumped Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007, in with the grading scandal in Indiana that embroiled the current Florida commissioner of education, Tony Bennett.

Malkin begins,

“[Bennett’s] disgraceful grade-fixing scandal is the perfect symbol of all that’s wrong with the federal education schemes peddled by Bennett and his mentor, former GOP governor Jeb Bush: phony academic standards, crony contracts, and big-government and big-business collusion masquerading as “reform.”

Tony Bennett was a strong supporter of school choice and common core. His resignation over issues related to A-F grading has now encouraged opportunists on the left and right to attack. Malkin begins her piece by lumping education policy together in one big pot and, without consideration, dismisses everything that was accomplished in Florida. Malkin didn’t take the time to separate out education policy in her hurried effort to attack Common Core.

And this is where Michelle Malkin is getting it wrong.

Malkin, in this respect, is following the approach of Diane Ravitch or Florida’s Fund Education Now organization. They tend to take advantage of any grading scandal to oppose and roll back A-F grading scales, accountability, teacher evaluations, and to besmirch the progress of any other reform attached to Bennett or Bush. Malkin is using this opportunity to attack Common Core, but her careless generalizations do more harm to the school choice and accountability movement.

Whether you agree or disagree with Common Core you simply cannot deny the strong growth in education achievement seen in Florida. Jeb Bush’s many reforms were a part of the growth. Denying that because you disagree with one unimplemented policy is irresponsible.

Charter schools. Pasco's Dayspring Academy, where state Sen. John Legg is an administrator, puts off expansion plans for a year. Gradebook. An F-rated charter in Flagler shows improvement. Daytona Beach News Journal.

Magnet schools. The Palm Beach County district considers two arts magnets for the south end of the district. Palm Beach Post.

Testing. Whatever replaces the FCAT as Florida moves to Common Core standards must allow us to compare Florida to the highest performing states, writes Jeb Bush in an op-ed for the Tampa Bay Times.

Grading. Orange high schools are moving to a grading system where 50 is the floor, not zero. Orlando Sentinel.

Common Core. Thousands of South Florida teachers and principals prepare for the all-grades rollout this fall. Palm Beach Post. "Some" Central Florida parents don't like it. Orlando Sentinel.

Parental involvement. A prestigious Palm Beach County magnet is one of 10 schools statewide to be recognized by the Florida Department of Education. Extra Credit.

Parent power. The Tampa Bay Times writes up the new state law that gives parents of disabled students more say over their kids' IEPs. So does the Fort Myers News Press.

School grades. A Jeb Bush-Rick Scott split? Tampa Bay Times. So much for accountability in education. Answer Sheet. The system is a disaster, writes Fund Education Now co-founder Kathleen Oropeza in an op-ed for the Tampa Bay Times. The Daytona Beach News Journal writes up the recent BOE decision on the safety net. (more…)

In a state that has found itself politically deadlocked over whether parents should be given the power to change who runs a public school, a Bradenton elementary magnet school pulled its own type of trigger this week. The vote to convert to a charter school was made under existing Florida law, which calls for both parents and teachers to approve, and the results were a disquieting declaration of educational independence. Parents: 480-26. Teachers: 57-4.

This is an arts school mimicking art, conducting what amounts to its own version of Won’t Back Down, the Hollywood drama that featured a band of parents and teachers who fought to turn their own school around. Yes, there are clear differences: Rowlett Elementary is not suffering. It is a popular magnet school that has received an A or B rating from the state over the past five years and has enjoyed the financial fruit of a Rowlett Family Association that raised $170,00 just last year.

But Rowlett is a racially and economically diverse school, in a middle- to low-income neighborhood, and what is familiar is the powerful sense of self-determination. The campaign has brought together teachers and parents who in other circumstances might have been skeptical of such tools. One of the parents is an active member of a group in Florida, Fund Education Now, that has taken credit for defeating the parent trigger bill the past two years.

“It’s not the direction I thought we would be going in after 13 years,” said principal Brian Flynn, a 34-year school district employee who has led the school since it opened in 2000. “It’s not about wanting to leave the district. We wanted to be able to continue the type of programs that we have always offered.”

"We will be able to continue the excellence, the programs, the tone, that Rowlett already has," parent Glorianne Flint told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. "What is the School Board going to do to continue the wonderful programs that Rowlett has? The district can't give us that answer." (more…)