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Sunday, June 28, 2015

The Florida Legislature is just making #$&@ up or I hoped you studied for your SATs

A national board certified teacher? Who cares.

Went back to school and got a masters to improve your teaching? What a waste.

An amazing teacher that improves children's lives? Move along

Did well on the SAT ten, twenty, or even thirty years ago? Well now we are talking.

I knew Eric Fresen was dumb but this is beyond the pale. 

From the Tampa Times: About two years ago, state Rep. Erik Fresen picked up Amanda Ripley's The Smartest Kids in the Worldto read on the plane.


The Miami Republican had no inkling at the time that the book, an investigation into student performance, would end up driving a controversial $44 million line item in Florida's 2015-16 budget.
But as he plowed through it, Fresen found a common denominator among nations with top academic performance: well-paid teachers with high aptitudes. So he proposed Florida's Best and Brightest Teacher Scholarships, worth as much as $10,000 each.
To qualify, a teacher must receive a "highly effective" evaluation rating and have scored at or above the 80th percentile on the SAT or ACT they took in high school. For new teachers, just the test score would count.
This jackhole read a book while waiting for a plane and that's how he sets education policy? 
Instead of investing in public schools the legislature is bound and determined to use failed policies and gimmicks. We are doomed, officially doomed. 

2 comments:

  1. This is brain dead even for a repub. But hey, those great teachers have to vote along racial, excuse me, I'm sorry, party lines. Thanks. These repubs are destroying education and the dems are playing the fiddle while they do it.

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  2. I watched both the long and short versions of Ms. Rippey's video and liked what she said. What you reference above must be only in the book.

    What I recall is the comparisons she made between the US and Finland, Poland and S. Korea via interviews with foreign-exchange students. In Finland, parents are not involved and they don't use technology. What they do have is buy-in; students believe that school is important to their future, not just babysitting for big children.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g2KjP2a20g

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