Florida really does not like teachers.

First senate bill 736 they took away Teacher’s work protections and put all the ones hired after 2011 on annual contracts where they could be dismissed at the end of the school year for any reason.

They then said half their evaluations (perhaps soon to be lowered to a third) would be based on a complicated mathematical formula called the Value Added Model or VAM. The National Education Policy Center, and the American Statistical Association among many others have said it is bad policy to evaluate teachers based on VAM scores.

This is highlighted by the fact that even children who receive a perfect test score can negatively affect a teacher’s evaluation. The Palm Beach Post reported: …it turns out that teachers’ evaluations can be hurt by students who earn perfect scores on Florida’s standardized tests.

That’s right. When students have earned a perfect score one year, Florida’s teacher-rating formula predicts that they should earn scores higher than perfect the following year. When they don’t, their teachers get demerits for supposedly not helping them improve enough.

The piece didn’t talk about the damage a near perfect or just a good score could have on teacher’s evaluations and remember since teachers are now year to year these scores can have both pay ramifications as Tallahassee has forced districts to develop merit pay options despite the lack of evidence that say they work, and employment ramifications as well.

Finally I will just add that Florida’s teachers are some of the lowest paid in the nation and the high stakes testing agenda that Florida employs has put both unbelievable pressure on teachers and practically killed creativity and innovation.

The bottom line is we can’t continue to hammer and drive teachers out of the profession if we expect to have a top notch system, but maybe not having one is the point. 

By killing the class size amendment Tallahassee has stuck a knife in the heart of democracy

It has probably flown under the radar in most circles but Tallahassee is about to stick a knife in the heart of democracy. In 2002 the citizens of Florida voted to limit Florida’s class sizes, which is a reform that has a proven track record of success, unlike merit pay, charter schools and high stakes testing Florida’s other preferred reforms.

In 2010 the legislature balking at paying for more teachers tried to have the original amendment changed so it would no longer look at individual class sizes but instead school wide averages. The people of Florida said no, meaning they had twice voted for smaller class sizes.

The legislature then decided to circumnavigate the will of the people by changing most classes from core classes, including advanced placement classes, to electives. Art, music and PE classes ballooned and many soon had 70, 80 or even more students.   

Now once again they are seeking to ignore the will of the people as the legislature in Tallahassee is about to pass senate bill 818 which says no longer will districts get fined for being out of compliance. Now I always though Tallahassee instead of constantly trying to kill the class size amendment should have properly funded it but when they remove the teeth which forced district to comply with it, they will effectively kill the bill. In effect why should districts comply if there is no longer any reason for them to do so?

By symbolically sticking a knife in the heart of the class size amendment after gutting most of the requirements a few years ago, Tallahassee has also ignored the will of the people, twice, and stuck a knife in the heart of democracy as well.

Florida's testing system has jumped the shark

Florida’s testing system may have finally jumped the shark. If you don’t know Jumping the Shark first happened on an old episode of Happy Days, where the Fonz on water skis jumped a shark and it signaled the decline of the once great show. HB 7069 signals that Florida has jumped the shark on testing.

Among other things in the bill it says this year’s tests won’t be used unless they are independently verified to be valid. That is right friends, we have spent tens of millions of dollars, including millions to buy test questions from Utah and we’re not sure if the test is valid are not. How is it possible that we have gotten to this point?

It even gets worse because Tallahassee has also said, they don’t believe the Department of Education has the ability to or doesn’t trust them enough to tell us if they are valid or not, so instead they are going to hire an outside organization to do so.

At a minimum there should be a house cleaning at the Department of Education and on the State Board of Education as they have led us to this point. Then Governor Scott through executive order should say this year’s tests will be used for nothing but research purposes.

We shouldn’t be using the state’s children and teachers as Guinea pigs, wasting millions of dollars is pretty bad too.

Being perfect is a problem in Florida

From the Palm Beach Post: As we reported this week, it turns out that teachers’ evaluations can be hurt by students who earn perfect scores on Florida’s standardized tests.

That’s right. When students have earned a perfect score one year, Florida’s teacher-rating formula predicts that they should earn scores higher than perfect the following year. When they don’t, their teachers get demerits for supposedly not helping them improve enough.

But since most students don’t get perfect scores, how often is this actually a problem?

Up to tens of thousands of times a year, it turns out.

Data provided by the Florida Department of Education show that more than 15,000 students in Florida earned a perfect score last year on the reading portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. More than 13,000 earned a perfect score on the math portion.

http://extracredit.blog.palmbeachpost.com/2015/04/10/data-show-thousands-of-fla-teachers-penalized-for-students-perfect-scores/

Need proof Florida is stacking the deck against teachers? Sorry need more proof. Then what about all the kids who just did really well, how much damage is that doing to teacher's VAM scores. 

No start date change for Duval schools

If you haven't noticed, this years Labor day is as late as possible, and to appease the mouse for years the state had a rule saying schools couldn't start until two weeks before. That means the first day of school for kids next year will be the 24th. Now you might be thinking what does a week latter matter but it means next year the second nine weeks won't end until nearly February.

Well the legislature rammed a new start time option into a testing bill allowing school start dates to move all the way up to the tenth of August. I asked if the district had any plans to move up this years start date and Ashley Smith Juarez said unequivocally no.

On a side note I attend the community meeting at Wolfson tonight with about ten other parents and community members. ten, there was times two district staff.

When the super gave his history of testing talk he left out a lot of nuance and then when talking about all the state shenanigans I thought he left out a lot of outrage but all in all I thought it was informative, we need these meetings, we should have more and I applaud the district for periodically having them. I went to ask a question about opting out and the super answered it during his talk.

I am critical of the super and the district when I think they deserve it but now I have to be critical of the parents and community members of Jacksonville because for just ten people to show up is a shame.

We have the super and school board, we have the high stakes testing and privatization that we do because the community often times has abdicated their responsibility to be both informed and involved.

Apathy kills.

All the problems with school choice in Florida summed up.

From the Sun Sentinel:

A year-long battle by the Broward school district to shut down two troubled Fort Lauderdale charter schools is finally over: the schools have agreed to close their doors.

The Obama Academy for Boys and The Red Shoe Charter School for Girls will voluntarily terminate their contracts in June but say they plan to reopen as a private school in the fall.

The two schools have been rife with financial and academic problems, violations of state law and breaches of contract with the district, records show. The district has tried twice to shut down them down: once last March when the schools relocated and failed to provide a certificate of occupancy, and again in October when the schools failed to document how they spent $876,000 in public money.


The schools appealed both decisions to an administrative law judge and have been in a lengthy legal fight with the district since the fall. Christopher Norwood, the legal representative for the charter schools, said the schools' governing boards decided to terminate the charters and begin operating as a private school.

"When you are a private school, you don't have to deal with an elected school board. This school would not have to continue to always look over its back," said Norwood. "There's less regulation."
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-urban-academy-charter-schools-final-closure-20150407-story.html

The owners of the school in effect said, if we can't make it as a charter school so we will make it as a voucher school instead. Less regulation is really a euphemism for less accountability here in Florida. There are undoubtedly charter schools and voucher schools that do it right, unfortunately the system here in Florida is set up so charlatans, mercenaries and people who have no business being any where near let alone running a school can profit handsomely off of our children and as you can see, school choice does not have much use for both democracy, choice school boards are not voted for and accountability. 

Young Turks, the deck is stacked against teachers.

The Florida Tax watch attacks the class size amendment again

In a dozen news papers across the state Dominic Calabro CEO of the Florida Tax watch attacked the class size amendment.

The Florida Tax Watch would have you believe the class size amendment has been a disaster wasting billions of dollars. Dominic Calabro their CEO says we have seen little improvement in student achievement from our investment. Funny because Jeb Bush, somebody who Calabro often writes fondly about is about to run for president based on Florida’s education achievements. They both just think failing third graders, not smaller classes led to them.

Instead of debunking every point he made and pointing out that smaller classes is the one reform Florida uses that has evidence that says it works, I will just say ask a teacher if they think they would be better if they had five, seven or ten more students.

When Calabro calls for an end to the class size amendment what he is really calling for is the firing of an undetermined amount of teachers, because where else will the savings he talks about comes from. It’s not the class size amendment he has a problem with but the teacher unions.

He says we should radically alter the class size amendment. I have another idea and that’s Tallahassee should listen to the will of the people who have upheld the class size amendment several times now and fund it like they were called upon to do.

Even if you don’t care for the class size amendment you should be upset by what’s going on because next time they may ignore something that you voted for that passed.

Why is the Duval County School Board giving away millions of dollars to headhunters?

From the Times Union: Duval’s School Board will decide whether to hire a firm to help it recruit physical and occupational therapists, speech language pathologists and school nurses to work in Duval schools.

Issue: Professional Placement Resources, based in Jacksonville Beach, provides contract workers and recruits personnel for school districts, charter schools and rehabilitation facilities around the country.

The district currently contracts with 87 of its 160 speech language pathologists, most of its 40 nurses and two of its 40 occupational and physical therapists.

It’s more expensive to employ them by contract than to hire them outright. Contract costs have risen from $5.5 million three years ago to a projected $7.7 million this school year.

In each of the past three years the percentage of contract workers grew, and the percentage of district employees fell.

“Our goal is to reduce our reliance on contracted services … and hire our own personnel at reduced cost, build internal capacity and sustainability,” district officials wrote.

The contract to recruit for the district extends to September 30, 2017, with three potential one-year renewals.

Cost: Maximum of $259,000 a year, including a $5,500 implementation fee, a $4,000 monthly fee and a $9,000 fee per person hired the first year and $5,000 the second year.

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2015-04-05/story/duval-school-board-vote-recruitment-food-fundraisers

So much for privatization saving money right. Sheesh and what’s even worse is I would bet dollars to doughnuts these contracted employees get paid less and have worse benefits than their district colleagues.

Um, here is an idea, end our current contract and hire the people we already have in place. Now sure there is probably a no compete clause or something ridiculous like that but strangely I have a feeling that if we ended the contract then suddenly a lot of school nurses and speech paths will suddenly be on the market.

Also if you do the math we could still be spending millions recruiting. Why can’t the district hire four or five people at 65 k a year and have them do the hiring and recruiting? We could save over a million dollars a year. Are we being lazy, incompetent or are we rewarding a friend of the school board with a huge contract.

Basically the districts solution to the escalating cost of contracting is to enter into a potentially multi-million dollar contract. Welcome to Duval County, where up is down, black is white and people jump on he furniture with impunity.

Jason Fischer shows his allegiance is only to charter schools.

First once again, Mandarin really? Sigh.

From the Times Union: Charter schools were initially supposed to deliver something different, innovative, an educational alternative for parents, said Paula Wright, a Duval board member, but these schools appear to be similar to the public schools they’re locating near.
Board member Jason Fischer disagreed, saying charter schools don’t open just to “cannibalize” students from existing public schools. He said he expects the new Duval charter will attract home-school and private school students.

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2015-04-05/story/charter-school-expansion-prompts-talk-goals-needs

UM WHAT!!!!! Charter schools only attract home school and private school students?!? Wow, that's new to everybody. What Fischer did is try to distract you from the awful truth and that's charter schools do cannibalize neighborhood schools and his district has been especially hurt by it, not that I imagine he cares one bit.

Heck even Ashley Smith Juarez who is no foe of privatization raised some concerns. from the same article: “Can’t we look at a needs assessment … with these schools,” asked Ashley Smith Juarez, a board member, questioning the Renaissance expansion.

 Fischer who has taken lots of money from charter schools asks us to ignore that charter schools while providing a no better and often times worse education, have a huge negative impact on public schools.

Mandarin really?!?