You may have heard that former Governor Jeb Bush regularly parades the “Florida miracle,” perhaps preparing for a 2016 run at the presidency. The formula, we hear, is testing and accountability, grading schools, charters and vouchers, and of course, online courses and schools.
This Florida teacher wrote a comment and gives a different view from the trenches:
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.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Another good article worth sharing Diane http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/The-kids-who-get-left-behind-4246148.php#src=fb
Another Bush education lie just like the famous Texas miracle sham from a while back.
Wouldn’t it be great if real investigative journalism looked at the Bush family & their ties to education dollars that have lined their pockets all these years?
http://www.thenation.com/blog/172551/jeb-bush-uses-his-education-reform-foundation-corporate-personal-gain-e-mails-show#
This article was posted on this blog a few days ago. The walls are starting to crumble. . .
Bingo! Follow the $ in all the many money making, corporations that not just Pa B. and Jr, but also many Bush nephews, etc. Why it’s a kind of family business, right up their with OIL and the military/industrial complex drinkin’ Texas buddies! If you caught MSNBC’ Rachel Maddow documentary tonight called “Selling the Iraq war” she did a fabulous job of exposing another pile of lies that lead us into a, KNOWINGLY needless war…3 trillion dollar, black flag operation, plus hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides! The REAL reason…what has Iraq got the most of, #3 in the world that “W” also loves dearly…oil! Lying to the public about any Bush clan money maker is just a way of doin’ business, to our detriment.
Lying about NCLB in Texas just comes natural!
Yes, thanks to NCLB and “reform,” SO much public money is now flowing to publishers of state tests (Pearson) and scads of private tutoring centers. The War on Teachers has at its roots nothing more than a shameless private-sector money game.
I wish we could print tracts of your story! I fear, truly fear that Jeb will be the GOP presidential candidate in ’16…ANOTHER BUSH??? 😦
It is no surprise that Florida is being praised as being a “Miracle”…lying and fudging figures is ALL part of the destructive propaganda across the nation. Sure is the case in Denver! Same for Rhee’s great program that seems to be basically fire teachers, end tenure, and of course unions so teachers are left with NO representation and are
slandered five ways from Sunday! Online courses are a joke here. DPS tried it with some otherwise wash out seniors. It hit the headlines here and was exposed as a total
circus! Massive cheating with computer parties to answer test questions online as a team event. Shows what idiots, corporate shills and greedy vultures are designing our schools! I taught for almost three decades, and was in one of the top, DPS schools until a “Rhee event” took over our school, which has since been a pitiful shadow of its
former self. My last years there, I had 29 or 30 first graders in my renovated, tiny
classroom that had been, open concept, so the “rooms” were cramped, heating/air
conditioning meant for open concept never could function after the change. Can public
education ever recover?? I sadly doubt it.
Me too :^(
You are correct. Read, “Yes, We Are STUPID in America!”.
Thanks for the tip: My question, will we awaken the public in time before corporate America ruins public education, unions, the middle class, the unfortunate victims of shipping jobs to overseas sweat shops….seems that the chess game of destruction is becoming a “check mate…”
This article makes want to stand up and shout at the school board in Hartford, CT after the Adamowski fiasco, “Are you really TOO STUPID to see the damage to our students and our schools caused by Adamowski and his reforms?” Our “miracle”, as proclaimed by Adamowski and supported by Governor Malloy, centered on falsified graduation rates (achieved by actually preventing teachers failing any students, even those who never attended classes), falsified test scores (actually having administrators change student answers), andcutting out any real student course choices under the guise of creating “small learning academies” that offer myopic programs.
After getting nowhere by providing news reportes with the real, tangible evidence to back these observations up, I have reluctantly concluded that the press doesn’t care about the reform fraud being perpetrated against our children and our schools.
I am also somewhat disappointed that teachers do not really seem to care. We sit and complain but nobody wants to get involved to DO SOMETHING! We offer excuses such as, “I teach a full load and have no time.” or “I would go to the meeting but it is too far away.” We teachers say that we are afraid of losing our jobs, ignoring Federal whistle blowing laws.
Can you imagine if our unions, instead of simply stating that, “We support Garfield High.” actually got involved in organizing our teachers to do the same thing? Can you imaging if our unions actually organized “Teach-Ins” during periods of standardized testing, thereby advertising to the world that which we could be doing instead of testing?
Instead, we complain in blogs and DO NOTHING!!!
Both the Texas and Florida miracles were debunked more formally, rather than rely on anecdotal nuances – http://neatoday.org/2011/04/18/floridas-reform-success-an-inflated-reputation/
Very interesting comment Florida teacher. It’s hard to believe this has been allowed to happen.
Actually, there is a Florida miracle. The state of Florida decided to finally require that students be able to spell and use correct grammar in 2012–not just appear to write a topic sentence, three barely recognizable supporting details, and somewhat of a “closing” paragraph. Of course this is a bit of a problem because Florida’s curriculum nearly forbids the teaching of spelling and grammar. Florida’s reaction? The department of education decided to just lower the standard considered to be proficient. If nothing else, Florida proves to be a great example of lowering expectations to show improvement–after all, Einstein proved that all things are relative so lets just lower the bar so that no one student fails.
Furthermore, many of Florida’s school districts are enthusiastic supporters of doing nothing ought to be rewarded. Choosing to do nothing is still a choice, right? For this student exercise of free-will, all students are rewarded with a 50%. In reality, what this has proven is that students do know their math–students have quickly calculated which assignments/tests one can choose not to do and still “earn” the desired grade. It appears that Florida’s students are not dumb but instead are particularly well versed in the advanced concepts of opportunity cost–we do underestimate them so.
Perhaps most astonishing, however, is Florida Board of Education’s outright racism demonstrated by their fairly recent decision to and refusal to back down from creating a caste system for Florida’s many races and ethnicities. Florida has revived Jim Crow–not all are capable of being academic equals when it comes to proficiency. Here is an excerpt as reported by the Palm Beach Post:
“[October 9, 2012], the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level. For math, the goals are 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient, whites at 86 percent, Hispanics at 80 percent and blacks at 74 percent. It also measures by other groupings, such as poverty and disabilities, reported the Palm Beach Post.”
The fact that these practices continue in the open, unchallenged and unashamedly, is proof that miracles do happen.
Good point. Read, “Yes, We Are STUPID in America!”.
I am a high school student who attends a public school in Seminole County and I applaud you for this blog. This past year especially I have felt as if every other second I’m being force-fed a meaningless statistic about how wonderful the education is in Florida and how we are excelling by leaps and bounds, while I watch teachers and students alike suffer the consequences of these careless political decisions.
Our school’s media center is also a “Hub for Technology” computer lab to be used by teachers for testing, and 124 out of the 180 school days it is being used for just that – PERT, EOC, FCAT, AP, SAT, ACT, semester exams – when are teachers supposed to have the time to teach? We worry about budget cuts (to an already laughable budget), but while faculty and staff are being laid off and programs cut, the money is being handed away to test makers. These tests give us meaningless figures to show everyone we can that we’re “progressing” but personally I believe we are regressing.
And the evaluation systems for both teachers AND students are so ridiculous, it’s as if the public school system is a parody of itself. The pressure a teacher is put under to have all of the correct phrases, learning goals, and “percentile gain” methods on display in their classrooms; I honestly don’t know how they manage to do it. Stopping to have every high school student hold up a hand gesture and gauge their understanding on a lesson every time one is taught, just because these Marzano techniques were highly effective in ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS is, to me, insane.
I don’t even know what to do about any of this either aside from hope that someone with power, someone with common sense, someone with a love of EDUCATION, realizes what is going on and decides to take action. Because seeing my teachers crumpling under stress due to the greed of heartless politicians is something that I can hardly stomach.