Gary Chartrand wouldn’t know the whole truth if it bit him.

Talking about Common Core in the Jacksonville Business Journal, Mr. Chartrand said:  “There absolutely is a need. Florida ranks high for education nationally, but the U.S. is still ranked 25th in the world.

What Chartrand doesn’t mention is when you factor out poverty, and a fifth of our kids live in it and another 5^th just above it our scores zoom to either the top or near the top. He also doesn’t mention that Florida’s education programs don’t address poverty and even make things worse for kids that live in it.

He often runs fast and lose with the truth furthermore what has he gotten right about education again?

He brought Teach for America to Jacksonville and they do the opposite of best practices, taking poorly trained non-education types and putting them in our neediest classrooms.

He brought the KIPP charter school to town and touted it as a savior, and it’s grades have been F, B and D, well it would have been a D if the Chartrand rule, the rule that says school grades can only drop one letter grade even if they are supposed to drop more, hadn’t passed.

Speaking of the Chartrand rule, if you think Florida’s accountability system has become more muddles and confusing and lacks accountability since Chartrand arrived to the board 2 plus years ago then you are not the only one. 

Chartrand helped create the states raced based education goals. He doesn’t feel as if black kids have to do as well as white kids apparently.

There are his two choices for education commissioner, which have been less than stellar. Gerard Robinson lasted a year and Tony Bennett is resigning today in disgrace after revelations that he altered a donor’s charter school grade.

Furthermore Florida’s very own voucher expert said the kids that use them don’t experience better education out comes and this despite they have the same advantages that charter schools have. I submit that both vouchers and charter schools are unmitigated failures even if they equal the what public schools do and many do not. 

Throw in his push for merit pay, which has no evidence that says it works and his criticism of the class size rule, which has lots of evidence that says it does, then what has he got right again?

This guy went from top fifty in grocery store news to running our schools and it is showing.