How dumb does the Florida Legislature think you are? It turns out very

Florida plans to stick it to education… again. They are so brazen you don’t have to read between the lines to see it. They just announce it and then try to sell their changes like they are good things as if the people of Florida are to dumb to see their machinations. Hmm, maybe given our track record of voting against our self-interests and putting anti-public education people in positions of power maybe they are right.

The states latest trick is to up the passing scores on the FCAT. They say this will make us the most rigorous education system in the nation. I say it is like telling a pole vaulter who has never hit ten feet they must now hit twelve or like NASA of the sixties saying, you know what, lets skip the moon and head straight to Mars, i.e. it doesn’t make any sense.

We don’t need Algebra II, we need a rigorous Algebra I were the words a colleague spoke to me on the last day of last year. He then went onto tell me that he had maybe one kid in his three sections that would pass a legitimate Algebra I class, he then paused for dramatic effect, with a C.

Kids today because of the backwards system we have set up are just passed along whether they have the skills or not and many do not!!! Last year only seven percent of the freshmen at Raines High school read at grade level (or what passes for grade level on the FCAT) yet there they were. What does the legislature want? Zero?

We don’t need to ratchet things up, we need to slow things down and make sure we have things right first but this isn’t the worse part of it.

How do you think these increased scores are going to affect all the charter school bills the legislature recently passed and merit pay for teachers? If you are thinking, in a not so good way, maybe you aren’t as dumb as the Florida Legislature thinks you are.

The amount of F schools will triple, opening more and more doors for charter schools and since what is considered failing will increase dramatically now teachers won’t just be lucky to get merit pay (not that the legislature has funded merit pay) they will be lucky to keep their jobs. Speaking of jobs, who is going to work at these schools were low scores are just about a foregone conclusion? If you guessed the desperate and nobody there may be hope for you.

The legislature is about to stick it to education again.