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Thursday, May 24, 2012

Is it madness or politics that drives education in Florida?

From My EducationNext, by Diane Hanfman m

Enter at your own risk. The lines are being drawn in the sand. The Jeb Bush/Governor Scott/Gerard Robinson camp will follow the advice of a PR firm and talk high standards. Wait right there...Jeb and his camp have been boasting of high standards and raising them for years. Scratching my head, I am curious how removing the multiple choice items relevant to punctuation, capitalization, and grammatical choices years ago was raising the standard. The results were poor back then and then extinct. Hmmm. Sounds familiar.

Still wondering if logic has been made a negative, I predict we will be hearing that when standards are raised, students meet them. Will the speaker of this nice sounding set of words then gain an inch on his or her nose? Doesn't the fall of the Writing scores demonstrate that higher standards are not always reached by all? They were met by 27to 31%..until that magic phone call...where a miracle occurred. Just as a pumpkin became a stagecoach in a child's story, lousy results became good ones. POOF...all is well..pay no attention to those silly low scores. We have property values and enticing businesses and residents to consider. Why hasn't it been about respecting individual learning starting points and paces of our diverse learners and the provision of helpful information to those involved with the education of them? Where was the thoughtful pause and aha moment?

I write as a parent and am not informed ho one equates differing tests. However, I do possess enough sense to think that if one changes tests ,scoring weightings, number of scorers, acceptable cutoff scores, and availability of a draft, the results may be har to predict. I would wonder if it would be fair to compare an apple to a suitcase. I would have acted to stop the comparison. Children's lives are effected, School funding is effected. Teacher longevity will be a factor.

Given the enormous significance given to a test score, I would have stopped the comparison of an apple to a suitcase

..but that is just me. I thought our children and schools deserved at least that much. Scratch, scratch.

This reversal of fortunes,from bad results to good, was performed by Florida Education leaders in Tallahassee....by phone. I am missing where that step is mentioned in the A+ Plan. Is it in fine print, "f results do not fit the desired illusion, hold a phone conference and allow the illusion to be reconstructed"? It was felt the Chamber of Commerce and realtor groups would need a special explanation. Scatch, scratch...do schools deseve an explanation when home prices are inflated and deflated? Is the A+ Plan geared to schools and students or to business?

So the PR begins...I am ready. I read A Nation at Risk AND I read the propaganda of A Nation at Risk. That is old news, from 1983. Jeb's empire is shaking at the core. Let's hope the truth is exposed. Reality has a habit of being present..and now, back to the crumbling of smoke and mirrors.

I am thinking of Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall and all the King's horses and all the King's men..couldn't put Humpty together again...but they will try.

http://myednext.org/profiles/blogs/a-slight-interruption-in-the-madness-of-florida-education-or-do-i

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