Coach Bob Sikes blogs about Florida, where he teaches.
He just sent me his latest post, which shows that Florida has lost ground in its national rankings in both business and education under Governor Rick Scott.
Of course, Governor Scott listens closely to whatever former Governor Jeb Bush says, since he is now seen as a national authority on the subject of choice and educational excellence. But, somehow, those two big guys together blew it.
In CNBC’s rankings of the best states to do business, Florida fell from #18 to #29. Governor Scott likes to boast that he will make it #1, but the state seems to be headed in the wrong direction.
CBNC also ranked the states for their education, and Florida’s ranking fell from #35 to #42. It seems that businesses not only want to find a pool of well-educated workers, they also want to find good schools for their families. Florida, the home of school choice, is not doing such a good job on that score.
But don’t expect Jeb Bush to stop bragging about the Florida miracle. It just seems to have been a bubble, or like most miracles, a mirage.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you for this blog. It is important for folks to realize that the true ‘Florida miracle’ is not the work of Jeb and corporate lobbyists… it is the work of teachers and parents like Bob.
Florida parents, teachers, unions, public workers… and others have joined together here in FL to make sure the info gets out and to wake people up to these destructive policies. I hope more will follow your lead and Bob’s lead —> start a blog, share information, tell your story.
Don”t let Jeb’s voice, or the voice of any corporate lobbyist, be the only voice speaking for our kids. Kudos to Coach Bob for his tireless activism and to you, Dr. Ravitch for bringing attention to these issues!
The gains we’ve had in Florida can also be attributed to the class size amendment.
Diane, We should also remember that President Obama too propagates the Zombie lie that Jeb Bush is some authority on education.
Note to Diane: Nice Try but No Cigar
If you had spent a moment on the CNBC site, you would have noticed that they don’t explain their methodology. Many rankings make the mistake of measuring inputs rather than outputs, and this very well may be one of them.
Eric Hanushek meanwhile has used a very reputable source-NAEP-to measure the academic progress of states going back to 1992. Florida ranks second:
http://educationnext.org/ednext2012/
Maybe the Florida gains are attributable to the referendum requiring the state to reduce class size.
That is far more plausible than testing.
Everyone is testing, but Florida is one of the few states to reduce class size.
I will go out on a limb here and argue that there IS no “Florida miracle.” I taught in a Miami-Dade high school for 6 years and I watched our school grade go from a C to a D back to a C, stay a C, and then up to a B…I think it was also an F at some point in there. During that time, did I see any change in the “quality” of student? Nope. Did I see any change in the quality of the teachers? Nope. Did I see any change in the quality of the coursework? YES. It went DOWN year after year, as more and more emphasis was placed on testing, and less and less on everything else. As end-of-course exams were introduced, the quality went down still further, as classes were disrupted even more for testing and test prep. And while the class size amendment was the one and ONLY good thing left in FL education, that too has pretty much gone out the window, at least in high school, as “core classes” were redefined to mean “FCAT classes.” My last year teaching (last year) I had up to 38 students in my French classes. The quality of my classes definitely went down, though not because I was lazy or incompetent or any of the other things teachers are called all the time…but simply because to keep a class of 38 from dissolving into chaos, you have to have a pretty teacher-centered class going on all the time. That is not ideal for a language class, but then again, neither is having a class of almost 40 kids all doing their own thing (which, as any teacher knows, means each one playing with a phone or worse).
There is no Florida miracle. Education has only gotten worse over the past few years, no matter how schools, districts and the state itself game the system. And, contrary to what the media will tell you, it is NOT teachers’ fault, unions’ fault, and I won’t even blame it on the kids or their parents this time. It is the fault of education “reform” led by Jeb Bush et al.