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Friday, April 3, 2015

Is the Florida House bent on destroying public education?

Florida is at a crossroads with education. Parents after all the recent problems have finally woken up and spoken with an almost universal voice that we are testing too much. Supporters of public schools are usually ignored in Tallahassee but now we actually have some legislators, some republican legislators listening.

Senator Lee of Brandon said: “I’m done with the testing program in the state of Florida, I’m done with the accountability system. Whoever those people are out there from whatever foundation they may be from, whatever testing groups they may be supporting: I’m over you. You’ve lost my confidence. And the reason you’ve lost my confidence is because I’ve got emails from you last night that said that you’re so married to this system that you don’t have a shred of common sense left.”‘

Senator Hays of Umatilla said: It is sad that today, many of our teachers and even administrators are simply waiting to earn their retirement checks because our well-intentioned but misguided policies have taken the joy out of teaching,”

Then former senate president Don Geatz said, “I think we’ve lost our way and we need to find it again.”

All very encouraging and as you can imagine the Democrats in the Senate were even more committed to changing how Florida tests.

However in the House they are singing a different tune. House Speaker Steve Crisafulli (R-Merritt Island) said that “we will not retreat from accountability.” 

Crisafulli obviously doesn’t understand that making sure we are doing things both fairly and right is not retreating from accountability. Shouldn’t our leaders in the House be committed to listening to the states superintendents, parents and teachers and doing what is right?  

1 comment:

  1. Yes, they should listen to their public, but instead of that they're listening to those who give them the most money - the testing companies and/or their backers, charter school companies, etc. Good to see that some of the senators are listening to the public, though!

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