After the release of emails showing that Indiana State Superintendent Tony Bennett manipulated the grading system to favor a charter school belonging to a big GOP donor, a furor erupted about his ethics. He is now State Superintendent in Florida following his election loss in Indiana last fall, a transition arranged by Bennett’s mentor Jeb Bush. Bennett was head of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change.
Florida’s Governor Rick Scott is facing an uphill battle for re-election in 2014, and some political insiders are wondering if Bennett will drag down Scott, who remained silent and pretended he had not read the stories about his education commissioner.
The question now is whether Bennett will be sacked. Not surprisingly, the loudest voice supporting him was Jeb Bush’s chief of staff.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My bet is the National Catholic Education Association will hire him!
Ugggh! I hope not!!
I’m curious about why the accountability bunch (corporate deformers) like Jeb don’t hold their own guys like Tony Bennett accountable for falsified education records. What’s more, the corporate deformers like Jeb and Tony pressure subordinates to distribute false public records and bogus charts in favor of corporate charters for the purpose of misleading parents and taxpayers for cash.
PK-12 teachers are held accountable for reform – testing and evaluation nonsense pushed down from Gates, Amplify, Wireless Generation, Pearson and other insiders. At the same time, deformers like Jeb, Arne, Bill, Joel, Michelle and Rupert cook the books for cash. What’s Michelle’s salary per year? – $300,000.00 plus $50,000.00 per speech.
America needs an investigation – Obama please respond.
Tony Bennett is just following Broad Academy rules: Deceive. Deceive, Deceive and if that doesn’t work Change the Rules!
Changing the rules and the accountability legislation by deformers like Tony and Jeb works in our favor. Let’s hope Jeb and Tony keep changing the rules to create a side show. Smart parents who have had enough will organize like TAMSA in Texas and the scheme to dismantle public schools and funnel contracts to insiders will be exposed. A-F ratings are as bogus as a three dollar bill.
Liar, liar, liar. Incompetent! Incompetent! Incompetent! Guess who touches Florida? Yup: Jeb and Bennet, both loons.
The pity is not there will not be a response from Obama. And if he does it will be a non-response and you and I will be g
Saying, “Huh?” While scratching our heads. Obama is over-reaching his job description.
Dear God, NO! Catholic schools have high standards, but I’m not aware of any being shut down for low test scores. I teach in an inner city Catholic school and our tests scores are not always where my Superintendent and her staff want them to be, but there has never been the threat of being shut down for that reason. We just have to show how we are working to improve. NCEA is doing its Common Core Road Show, but I think this is mainly because Catholic schools in states that have adopted CC don’t really have a choice. Text books are written for Common Core, schools in states with voucher programs may have no option but to do exactly what the state does and tests like the SAT and ACTwill likely soon be Common Core style. My Superintendent has had important roles within NCEA and I have respect for her. She has shown her respect for us as educators.
As for Rick Scott…he should have had more respect for teachers in his state. Even Alabama was aware that Bennet had been outsted from his position by a grass roots movement led by teachers.
I would like to see Tony Bennett pay harsh consequences (I feel weird saying that knowing how much I enjoy listening to the other guy, the famous crooner . . . . ) by either facing charges, as did Beverly Hall, going to jail, or being fined hundreds of thousands of dollars. . . .
Better yet, let’s put the crooner in charge of the schools and see what he does with the system. The local headlines will read, “Bennett replaces Bennett for Children’s Benefit”.
Until this happens, Mr. Bennett (the unacceptable one) will be laughing all the way – that is FAR away – from the court house and detention center . . . .
Let’s see what happens. Usually officials have to be caught with their pants down to be ousted (not another Anthony Weiner reference!).
Being fined hundreds of thousand of dollars is not punishment – his wealthy fellow reformers could dig out the change cups in their cars for that, My suggestion: Community service for five years teaching in an underfunded, high student and teacher turnover school in the fiscally failing city of his choice. Let the punishment fit the crime. If test scores don’t improve miraculously then pile on another five years.
That punishes a bunch of kids as well as Bennett. How about a very widely publicized apology, in which he unveils the true reformy motives, followed by being banned from ever participating in any educational endeavor again.
Or the guillotine . . . .
RR,
Messy but effective!
A principal in neighboring Hernando county was fired after his school dropped from a D to an F in the Florida School Grading fiasco last week. He had been principal for less than a year and this was the first F ever given to a school in that district. A scapegoat for sure.
Tony Bennett left a huge financial scandal behind in Indiana, disrupted the system badly enough to warrant being voted out of office in a conservative Republican state and he gets promoted to a bigger state with higher pay. No accountability for him, nor Vallas, nor Rhee, nor any of the other sleazy operators on the payrolls of the billionaires.
This is the quintessential demonstration of the corruption and lies of the reform movement and how they will say and do anything to further their agenda.
All accountability, all the time, arising from made-up data for teachers, principals, and schools.
No accountability, ever, arising from real-world corruption and malfeasance for reform “leaders”.
As the USA wakes up to the dangers of letting these criminals and liars take charge of their children’s education there will be a day of reckoning coming. This is the perfect coalescence of all the anger at corrupt bankers, bought politicians, soulless corporations greedy for profit on the backs of citizens, and the loss of civil liberties through the NSA.
Awake the sleeping giant at your peril, plutocrats. History shows a record of great correction against your worst excesses.
You’ll just LOVE tonight’s RACHEL MADDOW segment on Bennett:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26315908/vp/52627210#52627210
Has there been one major editorial in the Florida papers demanding his resignation???
I haven’t found one. And why didn’t the Times follow up on this story. It’s not even listed in their Education section.
Meanwhile I came across something interesting about Weiner….His spokeswoman Barbara Morgan is now under fire for her sexist rants about an ex intern who published a tell-all for the Daily News. She thought she was off the record when telling all this to a reporter. (So much for judgment in that camp). I was reading about this in today’s City Section of the NYTimes when all of a sudden the names Booker and Klein appeared, and the story also mentioned where she worked before joining Weiner.
Now this was all new to me because I had no idea of the Reform connections.
Before “Weiner”, Morgan was the Director of Communications for NJ Dept of Ed under Cerf. And before that she was a “Tweedie” under Klein. She has supported the Bloomberg agenda and helped develop it further in NJ.
So what does this say about Weiner’s plans for the NYC public schools???? He has all the signs of being another Rahm. Weiner wouldn’t dare go against RTTT and make enemies in the Obama administration. I am sure he hates the UFT for never endorsing him. (Just like Cuomo when he ran against McCall–and then the UFT abandoned McCall in favor of Pataki.)
Weiner has Morgan. Thompson has Tisch. And Quinn accepted donations from Rhee. Liu doesn’t stand a chance. We must support de Blasio!!
Good catch.
Schoolgal,
There are NO excuses for anyone in education . . . except the policy makers and lobbyists. The rest are microbes that can be swept away with a rag and some bleach . . . .
What is even sadder about Weiner is that he is the son of teachers.
Great analysis and thanks! Spread this around in other places if you please!
You too!! 🙂
Reading the actual emails, I have a question on the email where one or another reformer writes that he has somehow worked the data to exclude 4 charter schools, therefore making it possible “for us to say” (he writes) that 50% of charters are graded better than a “B”. Was there manipulation there?
I’d like to see some follow-up on that, if it’s indeed as it is presented in the email.
Correction: it’s 50% of charters graded better than a “C”, in the email.
Chiara, while looking at the E’s you’ll see that many Charters did not have a 12th grade(including Christel House ). What they did was change and manipulate a separate formula just for schools that did not have 12th grade. Then the dept. of Ed worried about Charters not adding 12th grade so that they could stay with this “easy A” formula!
I had read in one of the articles that Jon Gubera (the stats guy) had resigned but none of the other articles confirmed this.
This description is hysterical, “Nationally celebrated education reformer Tony Bennett…..”
Celebrated by whom? Crooks and Liars.
Let me commit fraud and lets see what happens to me. Career ENDS!
Part of the deformers agenda, get control and keep it by any means necessary. The outcomes of these deforms don’t matter since they can fix them to say whatever they want. You can bet this person, Bennett, will not be punished as harshly as a public school teacher. This is Florida folks, so do we expect anything fair and rational here.
Scott and Bennett are both chained to cinder blocks at this point and neither can help the other at all. There’s nothing, not one thing at all that Scott can say to distance himself from this scandal. Crickets with his head in the hot sand is all you will hear and see till he decides which foot to stick in his mouth.
Charges of fraud should follow, but probably won’t. The damage is done.
He should resign. Grade tampering violates the public trust.
Agreed. Awful thing to have on a resume though. I don’t know who would hire him.