How Billionaires rule our schools.
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If Jeb Bush was for puppies I would have to rethink my stance on them or why I am against common core.
Let’s go over a few of Jeb Bush’s biggest hits. Poor kids should have vouchers to go to private schools, just not the private schools his children went to. Educating children should be like shopping for milk. Florida’s state colleges of education should be blown up, Taliban style. Okay I added those last two words. The class size amendment is a failure and who cares if its initiation corresponds with the modest improvements in Florida schools. Experience and education for teachers doesn’t matter, that’s right education doesn’t matter in education. We need to rescue education from the tyranny of unions. You know those all powerful unions assuring teacher’s opulent lifestyles. We need to be student centered. Um, I don’t know any student who wanted to be tested to death, put in a one track fits all curriculum and not be able to go to any classes they might actually enjoy. You know what happened in Florida because of him. His latest man crush is for common core. Now I have some probl...
Education reformers want everybody to be accountable but them.
Accountability, accountability, accountability it is one of the words that education reformers scream to the high heavens. The thing is they are talking about accountability for teachers and public schools not about them. Instead they want you to ignore the man behind the curtain. Look at charter schools, in Ohio and Florida and all around the country which have become cash cows for hedge fund managers and supporters of the republican party, then there is vouchers in Louisiana and Florida that send children to schools that teach intelligent design or that have teachers without degrees, and what about all the odious teacher evaluation bills that use the value added formulas that can be wildly inaccurate or have teachers evaluated based on students who they never even taught, yeah that one was Florida too. Then don’t get me started about Teach for America which does the exact opposite of what we know to be best practices and assures our most vulnerable classrooms will have an ever ...
Who does Florida’s Education Commissioner answer too?
Here is a hint; it’s not students, parents, teachers, or even Rick Scott and the Florida legislature. Nope it answers to a higher Power, dramatic pause, Jeb Bush. Kathleen Shanahan, Jeb Bush’s former chief of staff asked incoming commissioner Pam Stewart who she reported to. From the Palm beach Post: Kathleen Shanahan, another state board member who also once worked for Bush, wanted assurances that Stewart "understands with full clarity who she reports to." http://www.theledger.com/article/20130917/NEWS/130919156/1005/NEWS02?p=2&tc=pg Stewart acknowledged that she did know. Jeb Bush, love him or hate him, and I am in the latter camp, is still incredibly influential in Florida’s education system and it’s him the board and commissioner answer to.
Northeast Florida educators not elated by Pam Stewart
The headline in the Times Union was, First Coast educators elated Stewart is new state commissioner. Two superintendents, Vitti from Jacksonville and Joyner from St. Johns were quoted saying nice things about her too. Unfortunately for the Times Union they don’t speak for the majority of educators in Northeast Florida. Why would we want more of the same leadership that has done its best to tear the teaching profession down and who answers solely to Jeb “I think all of the colleges of education should be blown up, larger classes are fine, teachers don’t need job protections and advanced degrees don’t matter, I put my children in exclusive prep schools with well rounded curriculums and small classes where they weren’t tested to death, the opposite of what I want for your kids” Bush. No we are not elated. We are disappointed and sadly we are used to it. Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2013-09-17/story/first-coast-educators-elated-stewart-new-state-c...
Why Vitti went to the charter conference.
From a reader: "Know your enemy" He went to the charter school conference to see the enemy of the institution he represents. He wanted to hear their argument, and see their plans while meeting the elected officials who receive large sums of campaign capital from these organizations. I believe he knows he is, Charter Money could quash his hire as Superintendent. So he played his cards low until the summer. Then the first move was increasing student responsibility with the end of Grade Recovery as we knew it. He eliminated the use of the Virtual School as a means of grade recovery. He knew the lack of controls which could verify hat students taking the exams were in fact those students taking the course and that the student received no assistance while taking the exams. He began to move more resources toward elementary schools, not in so much in academics rather in Art Music and P.E. He cut costs by eliminating administrate positions, and ended or greatly curtailed the expendit...
Superintendent Vitti basically says charter schools aren’t public schools.
Today in the Times Union superintendent Vitti talked about bring kids back form charter schools to public schools. Now this is the Vitit I have been waiting for and is drastically different from the one who went to an attract charter schools symposium a few months back. http://jaxkidsmatter.blogspot.com/2013/06/superintendent-vitti-uses-district.html I think he has a laudable and achievable goal. He is off to a fast start too what with the return of the arts and discipline to our schools but that’s just a start. I think the next step is just to inform the public how charter schools are doing when compared to their public school counterparts and where there are a few good ones for the most part they don’t perform as well as their public school neighbors. That’s a message that the district needs to beat like a drum. But what chutzpah our super has, he’s either talking out of both sides of his mouth see paragraph one or he’s saying charter schools are both inferior and not p...