Two sitting school board members in Florida are among the latest batch of applicants vying to be state education commissioner.
Rick Roach (at left), now serving his fourth term on the Orange County School Board, is perhaps best known outside of the Orlando area for his criticism of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, the state's main standardized test. Roach revealed on The Answer Sheet blog in December that he did poorly on the math and reading portions of the 10th grade FCAT when he took it last fall. On her blog last month, Diane Ravitch called him a hero. The Orlando Sentinel has more on his bid to be commissioner here.
Andy Tuck (at right) is a school board member in rural Highlands County. In his application, he wrote that Florida's education system "needs to be looked at from a more objective and business approach" and should put more "attention and accountability" on leadership positions. Interestingly, the Highlands school board was among those that did not join a popular resolution last summer critical of Florida's testing regimen. "I don't necessarily agree with high-stakes testing," Tuck told Highlands Today in June, "but I believe until we have a better solution on how we should evaluate learning gains, I don't think we should be passing any resolution."
Roach and Tuck are among 18 people whose applications came in after the Florida Board of Education voted last week to extend the commissioner search through early December. So far, 34 people have applied. As with the first batch, there are no obvious "rock stars" in the mix, which includes a number of school principals and small-district superintendents. One name that stands out: Dane Linn, executive director for state policy at The College Board.
You can see the first 16 applications in this earlier post here. Attached below are the most recent 18. (more…)
Editor's note: For those new to redefinED, "blog stars" is our occasional compilation of good stuff from other ed blogs (with a newspaper op-ed thrown in now and then, too).
Huffington Post: In search of the elusive, reform-minded school board member
What most people don't understand is that managing failure is just as hard as managing success. And this is, I believe, part of the reason school boards don't improve schools. Stability and coherence are watchwords in both the high-achieving and low-achieving systems. Administrators want to keep their staff happy and their board at arm's length. In both successful and failing districts, "micromanaging" by the school board is considered a no-no. I recall a woman addressing our board not along ago. "We're not supposed to rock the boat," she said. "But the trouble is that the boat has tipped over and we're lashed to our seats." Rocking the boat is exactly what must be done to effect change -- change, one hopes, that leads to better student outcomes.
I spent most of the last 10 years, on and off the board, pushing for a rigorous curriculum, stopping the disproportionate disciplining of African-American students, and complaining about the over-identification of special ed students (almost a quarter of our student body). But, for the most part, no matter what I proposed -- a new bus route, a paint job for the flag pole, or a curriculum -- I was mostly ignored. In order to get a pile of old lumber and rusty nails removed from the edge of a playground I had to threaten to dump it in the superintendent's driveway! Full post here.
Dropout Nation: The NAACP should listen to Romney (and Obama) on school choice
By embracing an education traditionalist thinking and Zip Code Education, the NAACP is aiding and abetting the damage to black children that it is supposed to defend. By taking money from NEA and AFT affiliates (including the $16,200 picked up by its New York branch from the AFT’s Big Apple unit during the union’s 2010-2011 fiscal year), the association is also betraying its obligations as a civil rights group to oppose policies that promote the same denials of equal educational opportunities against which it supposedly fights. In the process, the NAACP refuses to be a much-needed public policy voice and activist on behalf of transforming a failed system, alienating the very school reformers and black families (especially in urban communities) who are looking to build schools that black children (and all kids) deserve. And by adhering to the thinking of aging members who have a vested interest in maintaining failed ideas about how schools should serve black children, the NAACP has also lost opportunities to gain support from a new generation of African-Americans who realize that education is the most-important key to achieving social and economic equality.
When both Romney and Obama share common cause on systemic reform and on expanding choice, it is clear that the NAACP is on the wrong side of history. Now it is time for it to do the right thing. Full post here. (more…)
