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In this election year Florida politicians are spinning like crazy to make their education budget numbers sound good. For example, Sen. Don Gaetz asserts the misleading claim that education funding is at its “highest in Florida history.” The 2007, Florida Legislature passed a per pupil funding figure of $7,305.79. The 2016 proposed Senate budget reflects…
Take action today! Demand that the Florida House and Senate pass HJR 767/SJR 942! Let’s have some “choice” in politics and let voters elect their own Commissioner of Education. Florida Politics recently reported that public education advocates are “bugging” lawmakers to return to an elected commissioner of education. Isn’t that our job? Here’s the story: A group…
Betty Castor, one of Florida’s last elected and most beloved commissioners of education speaks out about why this should not be an appointed post. As she wisely notes, returning to an elected Commissioner of Education who serves in the Governor’s cabinet will give voters a real voice regarding Florida education policy. In her own words:…
by: Leslie Postal|Orlando Sentinel January 25, 2016 A parent-pushed measure to require 20 minutes of daily recess in all of Florida’s public elementary schools is to get its first committee hearing Tuesday. The Florida House‘s K-12 education panel has the bill (HB 833) on the agenda for its 9 a.m. meeting. The bill is sponsored by…
by: Paula Dockery, Tampa Bay Times January 21, 2016 Here’s my message to Florida’s 180,000 public school teachers: Thank you. Thank you for your dedication. Thank you for your professionalism. Thank you for your long days of teaching and your long nights of grading papers and preparing for the next day’s lessons. We don’t appreciate…
Two thousand teachers, led by the Florida Educators Association, rallied in Tallahassee on Thursday to protest Florida’s test and punish A-F Accountability system. This is the latest expression of a growing public rejection of nearly two decades of politically motivated, profit-driven education “reform.” Under current laws, high-stakes testing dominates the Florida classroom. K-8 Curriculum has been…
by: Gary Fineout & Terry Spencer|Associated Press/Orlando Sentinel December 14, 2015 Less than a mile from the state Capitol, a former steakhouse shows little evidence that it was once part of a movement to change Florida’s schools. It was on this location nearly two decades ago that the leader of a prominent Tallahassee church put…
Lower FSA cut scores recommended by Commissioner Pam Stewart have the effect of repeating the school grades issued in 2013-14, FCAT’s last year. That means there will be roughly the same As and the same Fs. Certain members of the Board of Education such as John Padget and Gary Chartrand along with lobbyists for Jeb’s Foundation…
Rep. Manny Diaz, dean of Doral College, a private university run by the state’s largest for-profit charter school management firm, Academica, is at it again. He’s filed another bill to strip school boards of the power to authorize charter schools. His bill, HUR 759, seeks to create a state level charter school approval process that…
by: Amanda Claire Curcio|Tallahassee Democrat November 17, 2015 Often, when she is thinking, she’s thinking in French; if she could, she would breathe in French. Everything is lovelier when spoken in French, too — even dreaded subjects like math. To Leon High School senior Jamilah Mitchell, learning the Romance language for the last four years has…