On top of the world. Gov. Rick Scott calls the PIRLS results (an international assessment that shows Florida fourth-graders are second only to their peers in Hong Kong in reading) “great news for Florida as our state becomes a hub for global commerce.” Jeb Bush says Florida students are “again busting all the myths.” No more Flori-duh, writes EdFly Blog: “Florida has gone from one of the worst reading states in the nation to one of the top reading nations in the world. And just last month I read a story about Jeb Bush’s education reforms in Reuters, which concluded: 'But a close examination raises questions about the depth and durability of the (education) gains in Florida.' Think we’ll see a follow-up?” More from Florida Today, Associated Press, Bloomberg, Eduwonk, Jay P. Greene’s Blog. (Image from questprblog.com)
FCAT for voucher kids? Gov. Scott seems to suggest that in comments to reporters Tuesday. Here’s the clip (starts at about the 13-minute mark). Coverage from Gradebook, WTSP, Orlando Sentinel, Associated Press, News Service of Florida. The governor will be speaking in Tampa tonight, at the annual donor dinner for Florida’s tax credit scholarship program (which is sponsored by Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog).
Race to the Top. Miami-Dade wins this round, reports the Miami Herald.
Conversion. The Broward County school board considers creating a countywide K-12 digital arts magnet in an effort to help a low-performing middle school meet accountability standards, reports the Sun-Sentinel.
Protection. From the Orlando Sentinel: "After listening to nearly six hours of testimony on both sides of the issue, the Orange County School Board added protections for gay, lesbian and transgender students and staff to the district's nondiscrimination policy early Wednesday."
Wait a minute. The Polk County school board and new superintendent John Stewart may delay the opening of six district-run charter schools for at-risk students, reports the Ledger.
School-to-prison pipeline. On the NAACP's agenda in Duval. Florida Times Union.
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Today on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush singled out Hillsborough County, Fla., as a school district where the teachers union didn't go the Chicago route over teacher evaluations: “In Hillsborough County, which is Tampa, thanks to the Gates Foundation, labor and management’s working together where there is an assessment of teachers based on learning gains of students. And it’s a thoughtful process. There was buy in by the union. I don’t think everybody is happy with it but most people are. And the net result is Hillsborough County has significantly higher achievement levels for kids in poverty for example than what takes place in Chicago."
We're based in Tampa, and as we've noted before, Hillsborough is different. After Hillsborough teachers union president Jean Clements won re-election this year, Doug Tuthill wrote in part: "Teachers in school districts today are understandably skeptical of reforms given all the change that has occurred in public education over the last three decades. Before they’re willing to embrace meaningful systemic changes, they want trusted leaders to explain why these changes are truly improvements. But as Jean has shown, once leaders lay out a vision and a believable strategy for accomplishing that vision, public school teachers are willing to roll up their sleeves and give it a try." Read his full post here.
Gary Chartrand, a Jacksonville, Fla., businessman who helped bring a KIPP charter school to Florida and sits on its board of directors, was selected this morning as the new chair of the Florida Board of Education.
Chartrand (pictured here) replaces Tampa businesswoman Kathleen Shanahan, who said she was stepping down as chair to spend more time with her business but will continue to serve on the board.
"I do have a year and a little bit left on my term, but I think it might be time to bring in somebody new from the perspective of going through the search and bringing in a new commissioner," she said, referring to finding a replacement for outgoing Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson, who departed last week.
Shanahan, chairman and CEO of Uretek Florida, a soil stabilization company, added that being BOE chair "was a tremendous amount of time as a sidebar. And you know my little business, which when I first started a year ago was just Florida and now eight states and possibly growing to another six to eight states by the end of the year, it's a time constraint."
Chartrand has earned a reputation as an education reformer in northeast Florida. He led an effort to bring Teach for America to Jacksonville public schools. He and his wife also contributed $1 million to bring the highly regarded KIPP charter network to Jacksonville.
He and other board members praised Shanahan's leadership at this morning's meeting. But, he added, "If the board is looking for me to take the chairmanship job, I will do it, I accept. I take this seriously."
Patricia Levesque, executive director of Jeb Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future, released a statement immediately following the meeting.
“Kathleen has been a steady compass for the SBE during a pivotal point in Florida’s education reform story, ensuring student success was always at the forefront of board and department decisions," the statement said. "She held the Department of Education accountable as it underwent some of the most rigorous changes in more than a decade. Kathleen has dedicated herself to ensuring each Florida student has the tools needed to succeed in the 21st century, and she will remain a valuable member of the board. Gary Chartrand will be a great state leader, particularly as the board identifies and recommends a new education commissioner. We look forward to working with him and the entire board as Florida continues to improve the quality of education for its students."
Editor’s note: Doug Tuthill responds today to a post I wrote yesterday about the failure of school districts and teachers unions to enact meaningful differential pay plans for teachers – and how that’s indicative of a bigger failure to help low-income students.
Ron, you raised some excellent points in your blog post about the unwillingness of the Pinellas County, Fla. school district to provide each student with equal access to a quality education. For nine years, I received supplemental pay to work in a magnet program that served the district’s academic elite, and for 11 years I was a leader in the local teachers union, which was complicit in the district’s refusal to provide equal opportunity. So your criticisms stung, but they were accurate.
This may be self-serving, but I’m convinced the cause of this leadership failure is not bad people, but an organizational structure and culture that favors the politically strong over the politically weak.
Growing up in Pinellas, I attended segregated public schools. When the federal courts finally forced the school district to desegregate, the focus was on ratios and not learning. The district closed most of the black neighborhood schools and bused those children to schools in the white neighborhoods because busing white students into black neighborhoods was too politically difficult. But white flight meant some forced busing of white students was necessary, so the district created a rotation system that bused low-income/working class white students every two years to schools where the black population approached 30 percent. (The court order said no Pinellas school could be more than 30 percent black.)
While working-class white neighborhoods lacked the political clout to prevent their children from being bused every two years, their protests were loud enough to force the school board to look for alternatives. In the early 1980s, the district started creating magnet programs to entice white families to voluntarily attend schools that were in danger of exceeding the 30 percent threshold.
These magnet programs were designed to provide white students with a superior education. Class sizes were small, textbook and materials budgets seemed unlimited, professional development opportunities were extraordinary and special pay supplements to attract the best teachers were impressive. In my case, when I quit my job as a college professor to teach in the International Baccalaureate (IB) at St. Petersburg High School (SPHS), my annual salary increased 28 percent.
The magnet strategy worked - especially the IB program. Affluent white families began voluntarily busing their children to attend our program, and in many cases students got on buses at 5 a.m. and rode over 50 miles per day to attend.
Unfortunately, desegregation via magnet schools increased the resource inequities that desegregation was suppose to reduce. (more…)
Last week, the Tampa Bay Times, the biggest newspaper in Florida, published a front-page story about Jeb Bush's still-substantial influence in Florida education reform. The headline was fair and straightforward -- "Jeb Bush shaping education in Florida" -- but then came the blurb beneath it: "Lawmakers listen. Private and charter schools and online learning benefit."
It sounds provocative, but we think the evidence shows it’s pretty distorted. If you don't believe us, just read the first two paragraphs of the story:
When Sen. David Simmons needed his colleagues' support on the education budget last week, he dropped a powerful name on the Senate floor.
"I had a conversation last week with former Gov. Jeb Bush in which we discussed this and his support of it," Simmons said of the provision to spend $119 million on reading programs at low-income schools.
It’s a little bit baffling how an editor or copy editor could read that lead -- about Bush supporting a big-ticket effort to help struggling readers in public schools -- and then write the aforementioned blurb. But the truth is – and we say this respectfully to our friends in the media -- that kind of thing happens fairly often in reporting about school choice. It feeds a narrative we don’t think is rooted in reality. And we think it's time somebody set the record straight.
Since we call our blog redefinED, it might as well as be us. So, today, we humbly introduce rebuttED, complete with funky new logo!
Behind the silly goat horns, rebuttED is what we're going to tag blog posts that aim to chip away at misinformation circulated by anyone who shapes public opinion about school choice and other aspects of school reform we find critical. It might be a newspaper. It might be a lawmaker. It might be an interest group. (more…)
