Sue Legg, who chaired the education division of the Florida League of Women Voters, describes the leadership shake up in the state.
The new chair of the Florida House Education Committee, as I reported yesterday, is a woman who was home-schooled and dropped out of college. She has no education experience.
The likely state commissioner is Richard Corcoran, whose wife runs a charter school.
Legg reports that the fabulously wealthy for-profit charter chain Academica has scored a big win.
She writes:
“Manny Diaz will head the Senate Education Policy committee. Vice Chair is Senator Bill Montford D Tallahassee. Diaz was appointed in 2013 by Academica to head Doral College. This is the college that the Miami Herald skewered. It had no students and was created to provide online dual enrollment credit taught by Academica high school teachers. Remember that former Representative Erik Fresen, the brother-in-law of Academica’s CEO and a consultant to Academica, was convicted of tax evasion in 2018 for the eight years he served in the Florida House. We really do not need to have Academica lead educational policy for the state of Florida.”
She further notes that with DeSantis as governor and a choice-friendly State Board That is bostile to the public schools that enroll most students, Florida will follow the Jeb Bush-ALEC party line of privatization.
This is an agenda guaranteed to keep Florida anchored in mediocrity, perhaps falling like Michigan to the bottom 10 on NAEP.
Florida casts a vote for mediocrity!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Florida has become a beacon of light for the charter folks and their cheerleaders. The state of Florida will probably never have the public schools that it once did now that Jeb Bush has set the tone and some how others have followed through.
Florida is a transient state however and most people there are not from the state so this sets up a system whereby these politicians can get away with this crap as most people ther are clueless as to the education system of the state.
So really what I am trying to say is that Florida has a population and a demograhic which lends itself to educational guinea pigs.
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Like AZ. Snowbird retirees want low taxes & don’t care about local ed.
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I can actually understand why retirees might not want to pay school taxes. Many of them are living on meager fixed incomes and have been paying such taxes for a good part of their lives.
What I don’t understand is those with school age children who don’t want to pay for schools. If they don’t want to pay school taxes, they should certainly not have children.
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Sure we get where seniors are coming from, but . Even the lousy prop-tax-funding system we have allows options of retirement downsizing so as to pay less into schools, & moving to lower COL states. I may get but really hate, e.g., — & can offer examples among my acquaintances– taking your bundle of NYC/ NJ – earned $ to NC where your lavish retirement is furnished via impoverishment of the K12 ed system et al public goods. Or retiring to FL/ AZ where ed policy flat-out guts public ed. The same principle applies to seniors as to the childless: we live in the public sphere, & are dependent on the publicly-educated to provide most every service we need.
And I wonder how many parent-voters really support gutting public ed. That seems to be accomplished via subterfuge by lying elected officials w/ predatory agendas and ideologue campaign-funders. Polls, referenda, & public support for wildcat teacher strikes suggest parent-voters are not happy w/extremist choice policy.
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additionally ideal demographic for Repub. control?
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Can we really blame the voters when this is happening in Florida like it is happening in other states dominated by the Republican Party?
Florida Invalidates More Absentee Ballots From Black, Young Voters
“Just before the November 2016 election, a federal judge forced the Florida Division of Elections to allow rejected absentee-ballot voters to correct mistakes on their mailed-in forms. Yet somehow even more ballots ended up being rejected in that election than in 2012 — and younger voters and voters of color, who overwhelmingly lean to the left, had their ballots invalidated at a far higher rate.”
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/aclu-florida-invalidates-more-votes-from-black-young-voters-10745341
“Florida Is Suppressing Hundreds of Thousands of Potential Voters, Study Suggests”
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/florida-suppressing-hundreds-of-thousands-of-votes-center-for-american-progress-says-10519088
GOP’s responses to the elections in Florida exacerbate ate concerns about voter suprression
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/12/gops-responses-elections-florida-exacerbate-concerns-about-voter-suppression/?utm_term=.88f6697537e7
How many times have we heard similar stores from states controlled by the GOP?
This absolute corruption of a political party started long before Trump so we can’t blame this on him. But the reason he became president is because corruption begets corruption.
The absolutely corrupt GOP elects and blindly follows a totally corrupt and incompetent president.
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You would think that with such a close election, there would be some attempt at compromise. Not with the right wing leadership of the state! Taxpayers should watch this radical right wing leadership like a hawk and resist bad policy whenever possible.
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Of all the ed reform states, I think Florida gets the most unearned praise among ed reformers.
There is no real analysis at all- it’s cheerleading. With Ohio and Michigan they’ll occasionally at least give lip service to regulating charter schools or voucher schools- with Florida there’s no dissent or analysis at all.
I wonder if it’s because Jeb Bush is so powerful in ed reform circles that they’re all afraid to deviate from the script. They’re mandated to wave poms poms for his ed reforms.
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Bush’s bad policies continued under Scott, and the two met frequently to perfect their devious plans to access and move public money out of public schools. The same will continue with DeSantis. Bush is the golden grifter of “reform.”
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Grifting runs in the family. Like W, Jeb has the grifter gene.
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I read a lot of ed reformers, and it’s important to hear what they say to echo chamber audiences as compared to the general public.
Here’s Jeb Bush savaging public schools to a cheering crowd of true believers:
“Bush, a prospective presidential candidate in 2016, urged a crowd of hundreds to take bold action to disrupt school systems that work for some students but not for many.
An ideal system, he said, “wouldn’t start with more than 13,000 government-run, unionized, politicized monopolies, who trap good teachers, administrators and struggling students in a system that nobody can escape.”
When they run for public office however, they claim to be “agnostics”.
That’s not what they say to their fellow ideological warriors. When they’re holding ed reform conferences they bash public schools BECAUSE our schools are public.
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We got stuck with the same stale ed reform people in Ohio too. Everyone gets a job for life in The Movement. Literally exactly the same people who gave us ECOT. Rehired. Many were promoted.
It means another lost decade for the 85% of families who use public schools- our schools and students aren’t even discussed.
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Something to keep an eye on:
“In this essay, Travis Pillow and Paul Hill explore what it would take to ensure that personalized and weighted funding follows students across multiple learning experiences, and could meet the needs of all students. Information through online portals and navigators who help families select the best options for their children are critical, the authors argue, as are addressing oversight and helping manage the transition from traditional funding models.”
Ed reform insiders are hatching plans to divert more funding from public schools and redirect it to private contractors for various educational experiences.
Another huge new opportunity for corruption and graft. If you thought charter schools were bad, wait until they start handing out funding to everyone who says they “offer an educational experience”
These people are bad at governance. They create bad government systems. The corruption is almost a given.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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FL has become upside-down land as regards edspeak. When I was growing up in the ’50’s, FL was the place upstate-NY nbrs escaped to who were caught doing shyster stuff, & on the run. I don’t think that has changed much: we had NJ friends who ran there 15 yrs ago in the wake of a pubsch food-service scam perpetrated by a biz partner. Our friends’ NJ-educated kids were immediately jumped up a grade. [My ’50’s upstate-NY-educated kids were advanced two grades, so maybe FL publ ed advanced, ’50’s-early 2000’s.] it was always a state w/ sketchy-qual public ed.
Today, Jeb! & friends have painted a gaudy new color on it: choice! At this rate, migrants’ northeast-educated kids will soon again be skipped 2 grades upon arrival.
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Oops meant my ’50’s nbrs’ kids – we haven’t lived in FL.
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