Archives for category: Bush, Jeb
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Conservative Columnist Slams Tony Bennett, Jeb Bush

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2013 //
29

Michelle Malkin is known for her strong conservative opinions, strongly expressed.

In this article in the National Review, titled “Jeb’s Education Racket,” Malkin eviscerates Tony Bennett and Jeb Bush. She writes:

[Bennett’s] disgraceful grade-fixing scandal is the perfect symbol of all that’s wrong with the federal education schemes peddled by Bennett and his mentor, former GOP governor Jeb Bush: phony academic standards, crony contracts, and big-government and big-business collusion masquerading as “reform.”

She adds:

“Cronyism and corruption come in all political stripes and colors. As a conservative parent of children educated at public charter schools, I am especially appalled by these pocket-lining GOP elites who are giving grassroots education reformers a bad name and cashing in on their betrayal of limited-government principles.”

Whether you are liberal or conservative or libertarian or anything else, you should be offended by the grade-fixing, by the cronyism, and by the cozy financial arrangements that now dominate what is called “reform.”

At some point, a light goes on and you realize that this so-called  “reform” has nothing to do with children, nothing to do with education as such, and everything to do with politics, power, and money.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Chiefs for Change, Florida

The Insanity of Florida’s School Grades

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2013 //
50

A reader posted this comment:

“In Gainesville a school called Einstein Montessori received an “F.” It is a charter school specifically created for children with reading disabilities. They gave the children with reading disabilities and their teachers an F because they didn’t do well enough on a reading test!!! It is insanity and dispicable! Parents must be the ones to make this stop!!!”

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Florida, Special Education, Testing

Is Tony Bennett in Trouble in Florida?

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2013 //
31

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.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Florida, Indiana

Tony Bennett Critics: Dancing in the Streets

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2013 //
31

A friend in Indiana had this to say about the Tony Bennett grade-fixing scandal:

“For those of you who are not from Florida or Indiana, you have no idea how this feels for us who are. This is early birthday, Christmas in July, karmic, happy dancing joy for those of us who have lived with the disastrous policies that the Bennett (Daniels/Jeb Bush) juggernaut has foisted on us.”

Karen Francisco, the editorial page editor of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, had this to say in an editorial called “How Much for an A?”

” I never doubted that the grading rubric was changed to make some schools look better, but I wouldn’t have guessed it was all about making one charter school look good….Indiana voters dispatched Bennett without knowing of his behind-the-scenes manipulation of school data. Now voters should realize the lengths public officials will go to keep the biggest donors happy. The nonsensical grading system foisted on Indiana schools was designed to punish public schools and advance the choice agenda.

“The question for lawmakers listening to hours of testimony over last spring’s ISTEP+ computer meltdown is not whether the scores are valid. It’s how much longer will the lawmakers themselves continue to support a charade designed and maintained to please wealthy donors?”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Bush, Jeb, Indiana

Principal: “Who Is Going to Help the Children of Florida?”

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2013 //
21

A principal writes about the sharp drop in school grades, caused by a change (again) in the grading system by the state:

“As a principal of a school in Florida who ‘fell’ from a B to a C, despite all the news press of the lack of reliability in the change in grades, our parents will still think our school is ‘getting worse’. In reality, our scores are the same or better than last year. Trying to explain this to parents and ensure their confidence in our school and teachers isn’t shaken is a difficult task.

“Jeb! and his cronies have done an outstanding job of convincing Florida parents that Florida’s public schools are bad and constantly getting worse, even while he tours the country bragging about how he improved the schools in Florida. The damage that has been done by another change in the formula resulting in lower grades will impact educators and students both. Imagine how children feel when they learn their school did worse? These test scores belong to children, children who are being told loud and clear that they are failures as well as their school. I would love for Jeb! to explain his grading formula to a third grade child who now has to repeat third grade because Jeb! and his foundation decided it was time to ‘raise the standards’ once again. How can the FCAT be called a criterion based test when the criteria constantly change for no other reason than we have too many A schools? Can’t have folks believing public schools might actually be doing a good job, you know.

“Frankly, I am very grateful I am close to retirement because the sadness I feel about our Florida public school system is becoming too great to bear. Of course retiring will help me, but who is going to help the children of Florida?”

Categories Bush, Jeb, Florida

End of Jeb Bush Miracle? Florida Grades Collapse

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2013 //
14

Jeb Bush has toured the country boasting of the Florida miracle. Central to the miracle is the letter grades for schools. But the state just reported that the proportion of A-rated schools fell from 48% to 29%.

Is the Jeb miracle over?

The schools didn’t suddenly get worse. The grading system is arbitrary, capricious, and meaningless.

As Fairtest points out, the state has changed the formula at least 30 times.

Here is the Fairtest view:

FairTest
National Center for Fair & Open Testing
for further information:
Bob Schaeffer (239) 395-6773
cell (239) 699-0468
for immediate release, Friday, July 26, 2013
FLORIDA SCHOOL GRADES ARE “WORSE THAN USELESS;”
ASSESSMENT EXPERT CALLS THEM “EXTREMELY MISLEADING,”
“PHONY LABELS FROM BY A POLITICALLY MANIPULATED BLACK BOX,”
AND “A CLASSIC CASE OF GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT”

Florida school grades released today are “worse than useless measures of educational quality,” according to a local expert on assessment. Bob Schaeffer, Pubic Education Director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), explained, “Based largely on scores from the low quality FCAT exam, state officials change the grading formula each year to serve their political agendas.”

The result, Schaeffer said is that “Florida’s school grades are extremely misleading. Phony labels from a politically manipulated black box do nothing to improve educational quality. It’s time for Florida to end this cynical, failed experiment in bogus accountability.”

Schaeffer noted that the state admits to having made more than 30 changes to its school rating system since 2011. “This is a classic case of garbage in, garbage out. The standards for letter grades are not even consistent from one year to the next.”

Founded in 1985 by leaders of major education, civil rights and student groups, FairTest is based in Boston, Massachusetts. Schaeffer has lived in southwest Florida for 14 years while continuing to work for the organization.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Florida, Testing

Oklahoma: Barresi Pulls Out of PARCC, Blames Schools

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2013 //
10

Janet Barresi, the dentist who is Oklahoma’s superintendent of schools, has decided to withdraw from the PARCC testing consortium because of the state’s disastrous experience with online assessment this past spring. Oklahoma’s not ready, she says, doesn’t have the technology, and can’t afford it.

The corporate reform group Stand on Children is disappointed. How will people compare children in Oklahoma to children in Maine if everyone writes their own tests?

Educators in the state are perplexed.

Is Common Core about common standards or common tests?

Categories Bush, Jeb, Chiefs for Change

Yes, There Is Hope for Change in Florida

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2013 //
6

This reader says that there is a growing move to push back against Jeb Bush’s disastrous reforms.

Twice, the state’s parent activists have defeated the efforts of Jeb Bush and Michelle Rhee to pass a “parent trigger.” Why would parents join to defeat “parent empowerment”? They knew that the parent trigger was a corporate reform trick to allow more public schools to be handed over to corporations for profit and power. The parents banded together to stop privatization, and they won.

The reader comments about the growing resistance:

I know that it’s way too soon to claim that the worm is turning but I’m fascinated by the pushback down here in the Sunshine State. For years it seemed that no one particularly cared about the craziness coming out of Tallahassee; we just kept on doing what we were told and hoped it would get better.

Now we’ve had a committed and active coalition of parents and teachers push back successfully against a parent trigger law twice. We’ve had a (former) governor veto a VAM teacher eval bill before it got passed by the current governor and then amended by this year’s legislature due to pushback.

Now we have the state school boards and superintendents pushing back hard as well. Finally. Looks like Jeb Bush’s famed school grading program is going to be tweaked yet again because it fails so miserably every year and has created much hostility in parents, school boards, and superintendents due to the ever-shifting ground, the perpetual motion targets, and unfairness of the whole mess.

Even our new Education Commissioner (appointed fresh after his embarrassing electoral loss in Indiana) Tony Bennett seems to have softened a bit, at least in his public statements. We may yet produce a groundswell of opposition here in Florida to fight back the worst of the corporate reforms. At least that’s my hope.

Either that or the cynical reason that Rick Scott wants to be re-elected governor next year and he polls very low when it comes to education. Either way their still remains some hope:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/18/3457546/state-to-review-tougher-school.html

Categories Bush, Jeb, Florida, Parent Groups, Parent trigger

Is It Fair to Move the Goal Posts?

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2013 //
27

In some states that are besotted with accountability, the policy leaders are convinced that students will do better if the tests get harder every year.

Florida and Texas immediately come to mind.

Would basketball players get better if the basket were raised 6″ every year? Would football players score more points if the goal posts got moved back 5 yards every year?

But that is what is happening in Florida right now.

The state announced that it was changing the scoring. If a school performed better on the FCAT, the state test, it might get a lower grade because the cut scores were going to be moved up.

The state superintendents complained, and said this was not fair.

But Jeb Bush’s organization, the Foundation for Educational Excellence, quickly responded with a letter saying that it was necessary to keep raising the bar.

Imagine how discouraging that is for students and teachers, when their successes quickly turn to failure because of a political decision.

Superintendents fear A-to-F grades will drop, ask State Board to make changes to formula

Leslie Postal

7:13 p.m. EDT, June 10, 2013
Florida’s school superintendents are worried that despite better scores on some state tests, public schools will see their annual A-to-F grades fall in 2013. They want the State Board of Education to “mitigate” that predicated fallout by altering the tougher school grading formula it adopted last year, according to a letter their association sent last week.
The letter from Wally Cox, the president of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents, detailed several worries about the 2012 grading changes, some of which won’t be fully implemented until this year.
“Even though many of our schools posted substantial increases in their 2013 test scores, their School Performance grades are likely to drop,” wrote Cox, superintendent of Highlands County schools, in a letter to Chairman Gary Chartrand.
The lower grades, he added, will be the results of an “ever-changing” grading system, rather than lower test scores.
“The ever-changing nature of the School Performance Grading formula and its resulting outcomes continue to confuse the public and further erode trust in the state’s accountability system,” the letter said.
The superintendents made several suggestions, including keeping a rule that no school’s grade can drop by more than one letter grade a year. That rule was in effect in 2012 but was adopted as one-year-only regulation meant to give schools time to adust to the tougher grading.
They also suggested that FCAT writing scores not be judged on stricter standard this year, as the formula requires.
The Florida Department of Education could not immediately say late Monday if Chartrand, or Education Commissioner Tony Bennett (who was sent a copy), had responded to the letter.
Bennett has said he expected school grades to drop because of the more rigorous grading formula in place for this year.

Jeb Bush’s group tells State Board to stay the course, stick with tougher school grading

Leslie Postal

7:57 p.m. EDT, June 10, 2013
Jeb Bush‘s influential education foundation, after getting word about the superintendents’ recent request for school-grade relief, sent a letter of its own to the State Board of Education today. The Foundation for Florida’s Future urged the board to stay the course and stick with tougher grading as a way to increase “student learning and success.”
The letter by Patricia Levesque, the foundation’s executive director, said Florida has had success boosting student achievement by repeatedly and “deliberately increasing requirements and expectations.”
The foundation noted Florida has ratcheted up the A-to-F grading formula several times before — and each time, after an initial drop in grades, schools have then earned better marks.
The group expects the same will happen now, if the board keeps the stricter formula in place.
“The Foundation asks you to remain strong and consistent on school accountability by moving forward with the rules that were in place when the school year started — the rules the superintendents knew they needed to play by during this past school year,” Levesque wrote.
A bit to add at 8:08 PM June 10, 2013

It is pretty tough to explain to third graders that their school increased its performance but the grade dropped. It is also difficult to explain to the public that the grades reflect a political curve. Will be interesting to see if Gov. Scott agrees with the Superintendents or the former Governer. OCPS tells the story by noting the highest performing schools and those with the greatest improvement. Never do educators send mixed signals to kids and expect that the following year the students will work as hard. Consistently high expectations and never unattainable moving targets.

 

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Bush, Jeb, Florida

Teacher: Reflections on Deborah Gist’s New Contract

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2013 //
20

This post was sent to me by a teacher in Rhode Island who uses the nom de plume Horace Manic.

Mr. Manic writes:

The recent renewal of the contract of Deborah Gist, the Commissioner of Education in Rhode Island, brings to light some interesting political dynamics. Considering the recent, well-publicized conversion of Rhode Island Governor, Lincoln Chafee, to the Democratic party of President Obama, it is not a surprise that Gist was rehired – despite the pleas of teachers and student groups throughout the State. After all, Deborah Gist is the poster girl for the Broad Academy, one of the most well-financed and influential corporate reform organizations in the United States. Secretary of Education and Obama’s Chicago basketball-buddy Arne Duncan also came through the Broad Academy. Had the contract of Deborah Gist not been renewed, it would have been a symbolic rejection of Broad and the ideology of the reform organization – an ideology that has pervaded school districts throughout the United States through the placement of administrators in key posts.

One has to wonder what will be the political implications for Governor Chafee, who already lost his seat in the United States Senate when he was a Republican. Even though he was well-known in Washington as a moderate, if not liberal Republican (one of only a few Republican who voted against the invasion of Iraq), he lost handily to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in 2006 in a wave of rejection of the Grand Old Party. Four years later, having declared himself an Independent, he won a hotly contested three-way race for the Rhode Island Governorship. He was pushed over the hump after President Obama endorsed Chafee, thereby putting nails in the coffin of the Democratic candidate, Frank Caprio. Chafee also was aided in his win by the strong endorsement of Rhode Island’s most powerful teacher’s union, the NEARI. By supporting Gist, Chafee seemingly has alienated the teachers of Rhode Island. Resentment toward the Democratic Party has been expressed by union members across the state due to the punitive actions put in place as a condition of Race to the Top funding. Obama’s ardent support of Duncan, both of whom who supported the firing of an entire school faculty in Central Falls, has left Rhode Island teachers feeling like jilted lovers.

If his actions as of late are an indication, Lincoln Chafee does not plan to run for reelection. He has estranged himself from an estimated forty percent of his supporters in rehiring Gist. With Sheldon Whitehouse serving in the Senate for another five years, Chafee, perhaps, has his sights set on a post that will return him to Washington as part of President Obama’s team. He is not wanting for money as his wife is an heiress of the Danforth family, one of the wealthiest in Rhode Island. A return to Washington seems a likely route for the son of a popular Senator. Whatever the political future of Lincoln Chafee, he was not much concerned with the vote of the teachers of Rhode Island when he made the decision to reappoint Gist. It has been suggested that Chafee’s decision was a courtesy and will set up the departure of Gist by her own volition. Time will tell.

While Chafee’s moves have been evocative, another dynamic is playing out behind the scenes that few political junkies have claimed to comprehend. Deborah Gist’s other supporter is Jeb Bush, brother and son of Presidents of the United States. As a lynchpin member of Chiefs for Change, a collection of state leaders most closely associated with Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence and proponents of Bush’s views favoring high-stakes testing and privatization, Gist has supporters in Democratic and Republican camps. This brings into question the relationship between the Obama Administration and Jeb Bush. This collusion of leaders and parties seems to go beyond reaching across the aisle and political cooperation. After all, one day not far off, Jeb Bush will announce his candidacy for the Presidency.

How do Obama and Duncan view Chiefs for Change? Does Jeb Bush back the efforts of corporate form organizations like Democrats for Education Reform and individuals like Michael Bloomberg? How will the competition for votes, corporation funding, and union support affect the entangled relationships that corporate reformers like Deborah Gist have formed.

Recommendation: Don’t be near the fan in 2014.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Chiefs for Change, Obama, Unions
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