Financial irregularities. Eighty-five percent of district schools in Palm Beach County show financial irregularities, an audit finds, with some cases involving “thousands of missing dollars, spotty tracking of fundraising cash and outstanding deficits in school funds,” reports the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Teacher turnover. The Pasco district knows it must find ways to slow the revolving door in high-needs schools. Tampa Bay Times.

Inconvenient truths. Florida Voices columnist Rick Outzen says it’s an “inconvenient truth” that Florida’s grad rates are so low. (It’s also an inconvenient truth, not mentioned in the column, that they’re among the fastest-rising in the country.)

Construction money. Supporters of traditional public schools say charter school funding is leaving them in a bigger bind, reports the St. Augustine Record. Says Colleen Wood with 50^th No More (and Save Duval Schools): “It seems to be the idea that parental choice is the guiding principal (for charter schools) as opposed to (students getting) the best education possible.”

Rubio and tax credit scholarships. Florida offers a model for a federal program proposed by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, writes the Choice Words blog. (Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog, administers the Florida program.)

Evals. The ones for administrators came out last week, too. StateImpact Florida. But there's a disconnect between the new evals and school grades, writes Naples Daily News columnist Brett Batten.

Early learning funding formula. Gov. Rick Scott says the state won’t change it this year, drawing praise from early learning coalitions, reports Gradebook.

Stuck in the '70s. In an editorial about the three finalists for ed commish, the Tampa Bay Times likens the DOE to "an old pinball machine" and asks: "At what point does the privatization of the public school system go too far? And what will you do move the focus off of vouchers and back to the heart of Florida's future - its traditional public schools?" Orlando Sentinel columnist Beth Kassab says go with Tony Bennett.

The mom on stage described how she and other low-income parents rode a bus through the darkness - six hours, L.A. to Sacramento, kids still in pajamas - to plead their case to power. In the halls of the legislature, people opposed to the idea of a parent trigger accused them of being ignorant, of not understanding how schools work or how laws are made. Some called them a “lynch mob.”

Then, Shirley Ford said, there was this sad reality:

“I would have thought that the PTA would have been beside me,” Ford said. But it wasn’t. “I’m not PTA bashing when I say this,” she continued. “To see that the PTAs were on the opposite side of what we were fighting for was another level of awareness of how the system is.”

Ford is a member of Parent Revolution, the left-leaning group that is advocating for parent trigger laws around the country. She spoke last week at the Jeb Bush education summit, sharing the stage with former California state Sen. Gloria Romero and moderator Campbell Brown. Her remarks, plain spoken and passionate and sometimes interrupted by tears, touched on a point that is vital and obvious and yet too often obscured.

Parents are not a monolith.

The divides are as apparent as the different dynamics that play out in schools on either side of town. In the affluent suburbs, a lot is going right. There is stability in the teaching corps. The vast majority of kids don’t have issues with basic literacy. The high schools are stocked with Advanced Placement classes. And there, behind it all, are legions of savvy, wonderfully dogged, politically connected parents who know how to mobilize when their schools are shortchanged.

The view is starker from the other side of the tracks. A parent in a low-income neighborhood is more likely to see far more teacher turnover in her school – along with far more rookies, subs and dancing lemons. She’ll see far more students labeled disabled and far fewer AP offerings. Issues like these plague many high-poverty schools, yet they don’t get much attention from school boards or news media or, frankly, from established parent groups like the PTA. (more…)

It’s rare to find strong school choice advocates on local school boards. But in Florida, another such advocate has emerged as a viable candidate in one of the state’s biggest school districts.

Jason Fischer, 29, is one of six candidates running for the District 7 seat in Duval County, which is the county that corresponds with the city of Jacksonville. As we’ve noted before, Duval has been particularly unfriendly territory when it comes to charter schools, vouchers and tax credit scholarships. So it’s worth noting that not only is Fischer openly supportive of expanded school choice, including private options, but he’s no ordinary contender by other measures. Last month, Gov. Jeb Bush endorsed him. And yesterday, with less than three weeks to go before the Aug. 14 primary, three speaker-designates for the Florida House of Representatives did the same.

Like Glen Gilzean, a school board member and candidate in Pinellas County, Fla. who we’ve also written about (and who also snagged an endorsement from Bush), Fischer defies the caricature of the school choice supporter who wants to tear down traditional public schools. His platform is by no means limited to school choice; it includes, among other things, more focus on teacher quality and performance pay. But Fischer doesn’t shy from the potential benefits that come when more learning options are available to more kids.

“If the government has a good functioning school in an area, and people want to send their kids there, that’s fine,” Fischer told redefinED in a phone interview this week. “My goal isn’t to undercut public education. It’s to make sure parents have the widest opportunities available.”

“I think the choices will improve the quality of education of their child primarily,” he continued. “But secondarily, it will force the public school education system to improve its service level … so everyone benefits.”

Duval has struggled even more than most Florida urban districts to improve test scores for low-income students, and the School Board and one of the county’s key education advocacy groups have resisted more learning options for these students. But Fischer suggests that expanded choice can be part of the solution. (more…)

For whatever reason, Duval County is a hotspot in Florida for criticism about school choice options for low-income students, including, most recently, a biting newspaper column about charter schools. The distinction is odd and disappointing because, for whatever reason, low-income students do particularly poorly there.

Low-income students in the Duval school district, which corresponds with the city of Jacksonville, trail more affluent classmates by double-digit percentage points when it comes to passing the state’s standardized math and reading tests. That’s not unusual. But they also trail other low-income students. When the results for low-income students in Florida’s 12 biggest school districts are compared, Duval ranks last in both subjects. (The 2010 figures showed 47 percent of Duval’s low-income kids reading at grade level or above, while 52 percent were doing math at grade level or above.)

This is not meant to disparage the hard work and dedication of public school leaders in Duval. But it does call into question the certitude with which they reject learning options that could help. Andy Ford, the president of the state teachers union, is a former union president in Duval – and definitely not a fan of vouchers or tax credit scholarships for low-income kids. Neither is influential Duval school board member W.C. Gentry or Save Duval Schools, one of the state’s most organized and media-savvy parent groups. From public hearings to the state Capitol to letters to the editor, they’ve relentlessly stayed on message: School choice is bad, a fraud, a conservative plot to enrich greedy corporations.

Expanded school choice “really takes us back to the haves and have-nots,” Gentry said in a Dec. 2010 radio interview. “The wealthy, the rich, the people in the know – they will figure it out. The poor, the disenfranchised, those who do not have that kind of support system – they will fall into the cracks and we will further enhance the disparity we now have in this city and this state between the haves and have-nots.” (more…)