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Rick Scott insults all of Florida’s teachers... again.

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By placing a Teach for America hobbyist on the state board of education, Rick Scott thumbed his nose at all the hard working men and women who sacrifice so much for the state’s children. Teach for America in case you have been living under a rock takes non education majors, puts them through a five week access course and then puts them in our neediest classrooms or the exact opposite of what people call best practices.     In case you were wavering because of the pennies he recently threw the states teachers please also remember that under his watch the state stole 3 percent of teacher’s pay to balance the books, and a draconian and nonsensical teacher evaluation system was enacted.   This also continues the state's policy of not putting educators or experienced applicants in charge of education and then we wonder why we are in trouble. Shameful.
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Why the rich and powerful hate the classs size amendment

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Rich and powerful policy makers often attack smaller classes as a waste of resources despite the fact no teacher ever said, I wish my class had 10 more kids because that would make me a better teacher. Jeb Bush has often attacked the class size amendment in Florida which was a citizen driven initiative that passed in 2002 and withstood a recall in 2010. He routinely attacks the class size amendment despite the fact he sent his children to the exclusive prep schools Bolles and Gulliver Prep who use their small class sizes as a selling point. Gary Chartrand the chair of the state board of education has also attacked the class size amendment. He recently said in multiple papers, “In my opinion we are wasting money to the tune of half-a-billion dollars a year, limiting the number of students in a class doesn’t help kids achieve but rather is just “wasteful spending,” he said. Ironically enough Mr. Chartrand also sent his children to the Bolles schools and his protégé, Duval County school b...
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D-Day

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Today is the deadline for state applications in the first round of the Race to the Top grant competition. The easy prognostication to make is that the vast majority of the 39 states (and DC) that apply will have their initial applications rejected and all will reapply in round two, due in June. Most will fail then, too. Despite the publicly released application scoring rubric , it is difficult to know exactly how the application scoring will play out, based upon who the reviewers are, whether Gates Foundation consultant funding helped certain states frame more compelling applications, stated or implicit pressures to fund only a certain number of applications (especially in round one), the importance lent to district and union buy-in from an implementation and sustainability perspective, and the strength of big-state applications versus small-state applications. To the latter point, there's ONLY $4 billion to be spread around, and the largest states could suck up as much as $700 mi...
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