Mehdi Hassan of MSNBC writes here about Ron DeSantis’ lies about Florida’s COVID deaths.
DeSantis is an advocate of herd immunity, although he was not at the start of the pandemic. To woo the hard-right base of the GOP, he turned Florida into a state that opposed mandates for masks and vaccines. He found a surgeon general who agreed with him. He placed the economy above the lives of Floridians.
What were the results? Open the link.
Ron DeSantis got the Florida legislature to pass strong legislation that puts undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation and puts anyone who helps them at risk of arrest.
Meanwhile, the agriculture industry—a key driver of the state’s economy—is worried about finding enough workers to harvest the crops.
Immigrant advocates warned them to stay home.
But farmers are pleading with immigrants not to leave the state. Even Republican legislators worry that the anti-immigrant law was a mistake.
Republican lawmakers in Florida concerned about the state’s new anti-immigration law and its possible economic consequences begged Latinos to not leave the state in clips from a Monday morning meeting.
The footage, which provides evidence of the law’s “downstream impacts on the state economy” according to MSNBC, shows two conservative Florida legislators attempting to minimize the harm that the law, Senate Bill 1718, could cause, with one asking attendees to advise Latinos against leaving Florida.
“This bill is 100% supposed to scare you,” Republican state Rep. Rick Roth said in a clip shared on Twitter by Democratic activist Tom Kennedy. “I’m a farmer, and the farmers are mad as hell. We are losing employees. They’re already starting to move to Georgia and other states. It’s urgent that you talk to all your people and convince them that you have resources — state representatives and other people — that can explain the bill to you.”
But no one blames DeSantis, who needed to prove his contempt for immigrants.
Agriculture is a big part of Florida’s economy. Who will bring in the crops?
Before the bill passed, the Farmworkers Association warned that about 300,000 of the state’s 500,000 farmworkers are likely undocumented.
Here’s a chance for DeSantis to create jobs for his fervent white supporters. They can pick oranges and grapefruit and other crops in the blazing sun. At minimum wage.
If you read one article today, make it this one.
Kathryn Joyce is an outstanding journalist who has written several excellent articles about the far-right conspiracy to destroy public education. In this important article, published by both the Hechinger Report and Vanity Fair, she examines the rightwing takeover of public schools in Sarasota, Florida, by the extremist Moms for Liberty and their hero Governor DeSantis.
Joyce begins:
SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. — On a Sunday afternoon in late May 2022, Zander Moricz, then class president of Sarasota County’s Pine View School, spent the moments before his graduation speech sitting outside the auditorium, on the phone with his lawyers. Over the previous month, the question of what he’d say when he stepped to the podium had become national news. That March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had signed the Parental Rights in Education Act, quickly dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law for its ban on all mention of gender identity and sexuality in K–3 classrooms and restriction of those discussions in higher grades as well. Moricz, a student LGBTQ+ activist, had led several protests against the act that spring and joined a high-profile lawsuit against the state. In early May, he charged on Twitter that Pine View’s administration had warned that if he mentioned his activism or the lawsuit at graduation, his microphone would be cut. (In a statement released last year, the school district confirmed that students are told not to express political views in their speeches.)
In the tumultuous weeks leading up to the ceremony, Pine View — Sarasota’s “gifted” magnet institution, consistently ranked one of the top 25 public high schools in the country — was besieged with angry calls and news coverage. Moricz stayed home for three weeks, he said, thanks to the rvolume of death threats he received, and people showed up at his parents’ work. When a rumor started that Pine View’s principal would have to wear a bulletproof vest to graduation, he recalled, “the entire campus lost their minds,” thinking “everyone’s going to die” and warning relatives not to come. His parents worried he’d be killed.
But after all the controversy, graduation day was a success. Moricz, now 19, delivered a pointedly coded speech about the travails of being born with curly hair in Florida’s humid climate: how he worried about the “thousands of curly-haired kids who are going to be forced to speak like this” — like he was, in code — “for their entire lives as students.” Videos of the speech went viral. Donations poured into Moricz’s youth-led nonprofit. That summer, he left to study government at Harvard.
Half-a-year later though, when Moricz came home, Sarasota felt darker.
“I’m wearing this hat for a reason,” he said when we met for coffee in a strip mall near his alma mater in early March. “Two years ago, if I was bullied due to my queerness, the school would have rallied around me and shut it down. If it happened today, I believe everyone would act like it wasn’t happening.”
These days, he said, queer kids sit in the back of class and don’t tell teachers they’re being harassed. A student at Pine View was told, Moricz said, that he couldn’t finish his senior thesis researching other states’ copycat “Don’t Say Gay” laws. (The school did not respond to a request for comment through a district spokesperson.) When Moricz’s nonprofit found a building to house a new youth LGBTQ+ center — since schools were emphatically no longer safe spaces — they budgeted for bulletproof glass.
“The culture of fear that’s being created is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do,” he said. And much of it was thanks to the Sarasota County School Board.
Over the last two years, education culture wars have become the engine of Republican politics nationwide, with DeSantis’s Florida serving as the vanguard of the movement. But within the state, Sarasota is more central still.
Its school board chair, Bridget Ziegler, cofounded the conservative activist group Moms for Liberty and helped lay the groundwork for “Don’t Say Gay.” After a uniquely ugly school board race last summer, conservatives flipped the board and promptly forced out the district’s popular superintendent. In early January, when DeSantis appointed a series of right-wing activists to transform Florida’s progressive New College into a “Hillsdale of the South” — emulating the private Christian college in Michigan that has become a trendsetting force on the right — that was in Sarasota too. In February, DeSantis sat alongside Ziegler’s husband and Moms for Liberty’s other cofounders to announce a list of 14 school board members he intends to help oust in 2024—Sarasota’s sole remaining Democrat and LGBTQ+ board member, Tom Edwards, among them. The next month, Ziegler proposed that the board hire a newly created education consultancy group with ties to Hillsdale College for what she later called a “‘WOKE’ Audit.” (Ziegler did not respond to interview requests for this article.)
The dizzying number of attacks has led to staffing and hiring challenges, the cancelation of a class, a budding exodus of liberals from the county, and fears that destroying public education is the ultimate endgame. In January, Ziegler’s husband, Christian — who chairs the Florida Republican Party — tweeted a celebratory declaration: “SARASOTA IS GROUND ZERO FOR CONSERVATIVE EDUCATION.”
It wasn’t hyperbole, said Moricz. “We say that Sarasota is Florida’s underground lab, and we’re its non-consenting lab rats.”
For as long as Florida has been grading schools and school districts — a late 1990s innovation that helped spark the “school reform” movement — Sarasota, with its 62 schools and nearly 43,000 students, has enjoyed an “A” rating. Perched on the Gulf Coast just south of Tampa, the county’s mix of powder-soft beaches and high-culture amenities — including an opera house, ballet and museums — have made it a destination for vacationers and retirees. And that influx has made Sarasota one of the richest counties in the state.
Since many of those retirees, dating back to the 1950s, have been white Midwestern transplants, it’s also made Sarasota a Republican stronghold and top fundraising destination for would-be presidential candidates. Both the last and current chairs of the state GOP — first State Senator Joe Gruters and now Christian Ziegler — live in the county. Sarasota arguably launched Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign, thanks to Gruters’s early support. These days, though, Sarasota isn’t just conservative, but at the leading edge of Florida’s turn to the hard right.
Partly that’s thanks to the Zieglers, who have become one of Florida’s premier power couples, with close ties to both Trump world and the DeSantis administration and a trio of daughters enrolled in local private schools. As founder of the digital marketing company Microtargeted Media, Christian did hundreds of thousands of dollars of work for pro-Trump PACs in 2021, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. After being elected state GOP chair this February, he announced his goal was “to crush these leftist in-state Democrats” so thoroughly that “no Democrat considers running for office.” Although Bridget stepped down from Moms for Liberty shortly after its founding, she subsequently helped draftFlorida’s Parents’ Bill of Rights, which helped pave the way for DeSantis’s 2021 ban on mask mandates and ultimately last year’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. In 2022, the right-wing Leadership Institute hired her as director of school board programs, and built a 6,000-square-foot headquarters in Sarasota to serve as a national hub for conservative education activism. This winter, DeSantis also appointed her to a new board designed to punish the Disney Company for criticizing his anti-LGBTQ laws….
Last year, when Ziegler was up for reelection and two other board members were terming out, she ran as a unified slate with former school resource officer Tim Enos and retired district employee Robyn Marinelli. The candidates drew support from both DeSantis’s administration — which unprecedentedly endorseddozens of school board candidates across the state — and local members of the far-right. A PAC partially funded by The Hollow’s owner campaigned for the “ZEM” slate (a shorthand for the candidates’ surnames) by driving a mobile billboard around the county, calling one of their opponents a “LIAR” and “BABY KILLER” because she’d once worked for Planned Parenthood. Proud Boys hoisted ZEM signs on county streets and a mailer was sent out, castigating the liberal candidates as “BLM/PSL [Party of Socialism and Liberation]/ANTIFA RIOTERS, PLANNED PARENTHOOD BABY KILLERS, [who] WANT GROOMING AND PORNOGRAPHY IN OUR SCHOOLS.” (Enos and Marinelli did not respond to requests for comment for this article.)
Open the link and read all of the article. It is a devastating article about the takeover of the school board by hateful extremists whose tools are fear and divisiveness.
Governor Ron DeSantis is filling every empty college presidency available with political cronies who have no experience or qualifications.
Fred Hawkins, a state legislator, was named as the president of South Florida State College, where he was the sole finalist in the search.
Hawkins served from 2008 to 2020 on the Osceola County Commission. But Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended him in July 2020 after Hawkins was charged with impersonating a law-enforcement officer. Hawkins went on to get elected to the House in November 2020.
During a special legislative session this year, Hawkins sponsored a high-profile bill that was a priority of DeSantis. The bill gave DeSantis authority to appoint the board of the former Reedy Creek Improvement District, which also was renamed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. The change came amid a festering feud between DeSantis and The Walt Disney Co., which had long benefited from the Reedy Creek district.
Hawkins earned a BS in political science at the University of Akron. He has no experience in higher education.
After DeSantis took control of the board of New College, his board fired the president and replaced her with DeSantis crony Richard Corcoran, a hard-right ideologue who had served as state commissioner of education but had no experience in higher education.
Taking control of the state’s higher education is integral to DeSantis’s war on academic freedom. With politicians in charge who are loyal to him, DeSantis can oust anyone who dares to teach about racism or gender.
The Miami Herald editorial board wonders why the state’s leaders devote all their time fighting WOKE but ignoring the dramatic rise in insurance rates.
Ron DeSantis and the Republicans in the legislature have spent an entire session battling drag queens, gays, trans kids, public schools, Black history, librarians, and academic freedom. They have given each other high fives, but homeowners will get hikes in their insurance, which was not on the political agenda.
We know all too well that Florida property insurance costs have been skyrocketing, with no end in sight. Now there’s a new study that shows just how bad it’s gotten, and it’s even worse than we thought.
According to the data analysis company LexisNexis Risk Solutions, the state’s property insurance costs are up by an incredible 57% since 2015 — nearly triple the national average of 21%, as the Miami Herald reported.
If that weren’t enough misery, Florida distinguished itself in another way: Insurance costs have been rising faster in Florida than in any other state.
Given all of that, you might expect to see the governor and Legislature running around as though their hair was on fire, trying to come up with fixes for our crippled insurance market before regular, non-rich Floridians are forced out and lawmakers get blamed for destroying the middle class.
But that’s the kind of logic that worked in saner times. In 2023, Florida’s leaders are so busy trying to get Gov. Ron DeSantis into the White House — with a legislative session tailored to his agenda, no matter the cost — that they can’t be bothered to spend much time on insurance, even though it’s a complicated and important issue that affects regular people.
No, in Florida, the long-running and worsening property insurance crisis has been buried under an avalanche of anti-woke measures, the ones DeSantis seems to think will carry him to Washington.
That’s a dangerous strategy. As the Florida governor hits the campaign trail in places like Iowa, he leaves himself vulnerable to charges that he’s not taking care of business at home.
For example, on Wednesday, the governor was set to visit the U.S. southern border. It’s a clear attempt to generate more headlines on immigration, following another taxpayer-financed stunt in which Florida flew migrants from Texas to California. Meanwhile, Floridians back home will be facing record hikes in flood insurance — an average hike of 131%. Where’s the governor’s outrage on that?…
The state is facing a property insurance crisis. Where are our leaders?
Lizette Alvarez, a journalist in Miami, wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post, explaining the outrageousness of Florida’s universal voucher program.
What I find outrageous is that this story is not being covered by the Washington Post, the New York Times, or any of the other major media outlets. Nor is it reported as news by any of the network or cable stations.
Why are these stories not in the news every day?
CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS ARE WIPING OUT THE LONG-HONORED TRADITION OF SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE!!
CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS IN EVERY RED STATE ARE DESTROYING THEIR PUBLIC SCHOOLS DESPITE PUBLIC OPPOSITION!!
Well, at least, the Washington Post printed an opinion piece telling of the greatest theft of the public good in our lifetimes:
Florida public schools are having an awful year. Record numbers of teachers have left their jobs, and those who remain face a minefield of ambiguous culture-war dictates about what they can say and how they teach.
And it’s about to get worse for Florida’s beleaguered public schools.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) recently signed legislation that might radically undermine the state’s education system by making Florida’s already robust school voucher program the largest and most expensive in the country.
Beginning in July, the state will make it possible for every Florida K-12 student to receive a taxpayer-funded voucher or savings account worth $8,648. And for the first time in Florida, the vouchers will be available to children from wealthy families, even those who are home-schooled or who already attend private or religious schools. The money can go to tuition and educational expenses.
At least five other states have passed so-called universal choice programs — Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Utah and West Virginia — but Florida’s is, by far, the biggest. Other Republican-led states are considering similar bills.
The new policy is a revolutionary (and expensive) expansion. The original state voucher program, which began in 1999, was designed exclusively for a small number of children in F-rated, or failing, public schools and, later, special-needs students. The program grew to more than 177,000 students, from households earning up to $100,000.
About 2,300 private schools in Florida accept vouchers; 69 percent of them are unaccredited, 58 percent are religious and 30 percent are for-profit, according to the Hechinger Report.
In a state infamous as a magnet for schemers and grifters, there’s plenty of reason to worry as millions of dollars in new spending will soon pour into schools that have little accountability. When DeSantis celebrated passage of his vouchers-for-all gambit as a victory for school choice, he was no doubt being cheered on by those with no ideology other than diving into any trough freshly filled with public money.
But, as of July 1, even the child of a private-jet-flying tycoon will be eligible for a voucher. As state Rep. Marie Woodson (D) said, “This bill is an $8,000 gift card to the millionaires and billionaires who are being gifted with a state-sponsored coupon for something they can already afford.” The rich might not need it, but who passes up free money?
Estimates of the cost range from $209 million to $4 billion a year. About 2,300 private schools in Florida accept vouchers; 69 percent of them are unaccredited, 58 percent are religious and 30 percent are for-profit, according to the Hechinger Report….
In a state infamous as a magnet for schemers and grifters, there’s plenty of reason to worry as millions of dollars in new spending will soon pour into schools that have little accountability.
When DeSantis celebrated passage of his vouchers-for-all gambit as a victory for school choice, he was no doubt being cheered on by those with no ideology other than diving into any trough freshly filled with public money.
A federal judge in Florida issued a ruling blocking the state’s ban on gender-affirming care. He basically ruled that the issue was between parents, their children, and their doctors, not politicians. As in, butt out and respect parental rights.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A federal judge delivered a stinging rebuke to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature over rules and a new state law that banned minors from receiving “puberty blockers” and other types of gender-affirming care.
U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle on Tuesday blocked the state from applying the ban to three minors whose parents are part of an ongoing lawsuit, saying they would “suffer irreparable harm” if they were not allowed to continue access to hormones and other types of treatment.
The preliminary injunction does not apply to other minors who may wish to obtain treatment, but the ruling suggests that a key part of the law itself could get knocked down as the legal challenge proceeds. Lawmakers approved the new law in early May at the urging of Republicans, who called the treatments “evil” and “child abuse.”
Hinkle’s 44-page ruling called the decision to pursue the ban on puberty blockers and hormonal treatment a political decision and not a “legitimate state interest.” Several states — including Texas — have also recently enacted bans on gender affirming care.
“Nothing could have motivated this remarkable intrusion into parental prerogatives other than opposition to transgender status itself,” wrote Hinkle, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton.
Hinkle also added that “the statute and the rules were an exercise in politics, not good medicine. This is a politically fraught area. There has long been, and still is, substantial bigotry directed at transgender individuals. Common experience confirms this, as does a Florida legislator’s remarkable reference to transgender witnesses at a committee hearing as ‘mutants’ and ‘demons.’ And even when not based on bigotry, there are those who incorrectly but sincerely believe that gender identity is not real but instead just a choice.”
The parents of the children expressed relief. DeSantis’ office had no comment. The sponsor of the bill responded that he would never stop fighting for children, even if their parents don’t want his help.
Yesterday I reviewed Nicholas Kristof’s enthusiastic endorsement of Mississippi’s reading program, which has raised test scores in fourth grade without reducing class size, spending more on education, or reducing child poverty. Kristof seems to believe that the so-called “science of reading,” allied with third grade retention and pre-school is the no-cost silver bullet to change American education. It should certainly appeal to those who don’t want to raise taxes or reduce economic inequality. The one study cited by Kristof in support of third grade retention was funded by Jeb Bush’s foundation; Florida enacted third grade retention and saw its fourth grade scores rise (but not scores in eighth grade).
Kristoff quoted a study that reached favorable conclusions about the efficacy of third-grade retention. He said that 9% of third-graders in Mississippi had been held back. I said that might be sufficient to explain the impressive fourth grade scores on NAEP: eliminate the lowest-scoring kids and scores go up.
Nancy Bailey, retired teacher, summarizes some of the research on third-grade retention: it’s bad.
She writes:
How can anyone who claims the Science of Reading is real think it’s OK to retain a third-grade child based on one test or for any reason?
If ever evidence or science existed involving education, understanding the rottenness of retention would be it. Yet some of the same people who believe using phonics (and more) is the one-size-fits-all scientific reading miracle seem fine with retention.
This is a crack in the glass for SoR science because it makes it look political. Retaining third graders because of a test may drive parents to leave public schools.
Children are devastated by retention. Once a child is retained, it changes their world. In Student Ratings of Stressful Experiences at Home and School, Anderson, Jimerson, and Whipple (2008) found that it rated high with various stressors.
Across grade levels, those events rated as most stressful by children were: losing a parent, academic retention, going blind, getting caught in theft, wetting in class, a poor report card, having an operation, parental fighting, and being sent to the principal.
When a child is kept back, they are more likely to be more physically developed in middle school than their peers. This certainly causes a child to rethink school and want to drop out.
In 2001, that’s right, 2001, Shane R. Jimerson’s Meta-analysis of Grade Retention Research: Implications for Practice in the 21st Century summarized studies of a previously published literature review about retention between 1990 and 1999, comparing this research with studies about retention done in the 1970s and 1980s.
Jimerson concludes:
In isolation, neither social promotion nor grade retention will solve our nation’s educational ills nor facilitate the academic success of children. Instead attention must be directed toward alternative remedial strategies. Researchers, educators, administrators, and legislators should commit to implement and investigate specific remedial intervention strategies designed to facilitate socioemotional adjustment and educational achievement of our nation’s youth.
Some SoR enthusiasts say if children had been given evidence-based instruction with phonics, no child would need to be retained. But even if this were true, why would they be on board for retention today when science is more confident of the problems with retention, especially third-grade retention based on one test, than the SoR?
It’s hard to believe Floridians ever permitted retention, since its researchers identified its harmfulness years ago. Many students have been retained in third grade throughout the years.
It’s perplexing to see legislators in other states endorsing it, like it’s a good thing, when the research about it is clear. It’s good that Michigan will no longer do it, but many other states continue to practice grade retention.
Furman professor Paul Thomas, who has written extensively about the SoR, describes retention here and presents a map showing the states currently subscribing to holding third graders back.
The same promoters of the SoR seem to love retention and are trying to connect it to Mississippi, where they appear to have higher test results in fourth grade.
The promoters of third-grade retention seem connected to former Governor Jeb Bush, who, for some strange reason, hitched his education star to third-grade retention based on a test. How sad that he didn’t promote lowering class sizes in K-3rd grade instead.
Nicholas Kristof is a columnist who is terrific on many issues but consistently wrong when he writes about education. As far back as 2009, I criticized Kristoff for a column in which he called American education “our greatest national shame,” citing Eric Hanushek’s since-discredited work on teachers (the best get students to produce high test scores, bad teachers don’t). Peter Greene took Kristoff to task in 2015 for being an educational tourist, making quick visits and issuing pronouncements that are wrong. I also chastised him in 2017 for endorsing for-profit schools in Africa.
Now, he has outdone all of his previous gaffes. He has discovered the amazing, miraculous, astonishing transformation of Mississippi.
Based on the impressive rise of 4th grade reading scores on NAEP, Kristof proclaims that Mississippi has lessons for the nation.
With an all-out effort over the past decade to get all children to read by the end of third grade and by extensive reliance on research and metrics, Mississippi has shown that it is possible to raise standards even in a state ranked dead last in the country in child poverty and hunger and second highest in teen births.
In the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a series of nationwide tests better known as NAEP, Mississippi has moved from near the bottom to the middle for most of the exams — and near the top when adjusted for demographics. Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math.
Its success wasn’t because of smaller classes. That would cost money.
It wasn’t because of increased funding.
It wasn’t because Mississippi reduced child poverty.
It wasn’t because of desegregation.
It was because Mississippi embraced the “science of reading,” strict discipline, relentlessly focusing on test scores, and using behavioral methods that sound akin to a “no excuses” charter school.
In 2000, Mississippi received a gift of $100 million from a Mississippi-born tech entrepreneur to launch a statewide reading initiative. In 2013, the legislature invested in full-day pre-K, where children got a start on letters, numbers, and sounds.
The 2013 legislation also enacted third-grade retention. Any child who didn’t pass the third-grade reading test was retained. Most researchers think retention is a terrible, humiliating policy. But Kristof assures readers that failing students get a second chance to pass. 9% of students in third grade flunked. He considers this policy to be a great success, inspiring third graders to try harder, citing a study funded by Jeb Bush’s foundation (Florida also practices third grade retention, which lifts its fourth grade reading scores on NAEP).
Kristof writes:
“Mississippi is a huge success story and very exciting,” David Deming, a Harvard economist and education expert, told me. What’s so significant, he said, is that while Mississippi hasn’t overcome poverty or racism, it still manages to get kids to read and excel.
“You cannot use poverty as an excuse. That’s the most important lesson,” Deming added. “It’s so important, I want to shout it from the mountaintop.” What Mississippi teaches, he said, is that “we shouldn’t be giving up on children.”
The lessons: it’s okay to forget about poverty; forget about segregation; forget about funding. Rely on “the science of reading” and third-grade retention. It’s cheap to follow Mississippi’s lead, which Kristof considers an advantage.
But!
Kristof minimizes Mississippi’s eighth-grade scores on NAEP. He writes: “One challenge is that while Mississippi has made enormous gains in early grades, the improvement has been more modest in eighth-grade NAEP scores.”
That’s an understatement.
Eighth grade reading scores in Mississippi have gone up over the past two decades, but scores went up everywhere. In the latest national assessment (NAEP), 37 states had scores higher than those of Mississippi on the NAEP eighth grade reading test. Only one state (New Mexico) was lower. The other 13 were tied. In Mississippi, 25% of the state’s students in 2019 (pre-pandemic) were at or above proficient, compared to 20% in 2003. Nationally, in 2019, 29% of students were at or above proficient*.
In 2019, 42 states and jurisdictions outperformed Mississippi in percentage of students at or above proficient in eighth grade math, eight were tied, and only two scored below Mississippi. 24% were at or above proficient in 2019, a big increase over 2009 when it was 15%. But Mississippi still lags the national average, because scores were rising in other states.
Has Mississippi made progress in the past decade? Yes. Is it a model for the nation? No. When impressive fourth grade scores are followed by not-so-impressive scores in eighth grade, it suggests that the fourth grade scores were anti Oakley boosted by holding back the 9% who were the least successful readers. A neat trick but not an upfront way to measure progress.
It seems fairly obvious that the big gains in NAEP in fourth grade were fueled by the policy of holding back third graders. Jeb Bush boasted of the “Florida Miracle,” which was based on the same strategy: juice up fourth grade scores by holding back the lowest performing third graders.
In 2019, fourth graders in Florida scored 7th in reading and 5th in math on NAEP, by scale scores. However, Florida’s eighth grade scores, like those of Mississippi, are middling, compared to other states. Florida eighth graders ranked #35 in eighth grade math. In eighth grade reading, 21 states and jurisdictions ranked higher than Florida, 21 are not significantly different, and 10 were below Florida.
Florida’s eighth grade reading scores have been flat since 2009; so have its its eighth grade math scores. Florida is a state that has gamed the system. Mississippi is following its lead.
Mississippi has made progress, to be sure. But it is not a national model. Not yet.
What’s worrisome about this article is that Kristof asserts that poverty doesn’t matter (it does); funding doesn’t matter (it does); class size doesn’t matter (it does). In his account, states that want to improve test scores can do it without raising teachers’ salaries, without upgrading buildings, without spending a nickel to improve the conditions of the schools or the well-being of children. Children who are hungry, lack medical care, and are homeless or ill-housed are not likely to learn as well as those who have advantages.
Does this explain why so many rightwingers love “the science of reading”? Publishers are rolling out new programs. Education can be reformed in the cheap. Can’t expect taxpayers to foot the bill, can you?
Kristof’s fundamental error is his determination to find miracles, silver bullets, solutions that fix everything. He did it again.
The U.S. Department of Education appends this disclaimer to every NAEP publication.
*NAEP achievement levels are performance standards that describe what students should know and be able to do. Results are reported as percentages of students performing at or above three achievement levels (NAEP Basic, NAEP Proficient, andNAEP Advanced). Students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level on NAEP assessments demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter. It should be noted that the NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards (e.g., state or district assessments). NAEP achievement levels are to be used on a trial basis and should be interpreted and used with caution. Find out more about the NAEP reading achievement levels.
Ron DeSantis wants to make America just like Florida, where the maximum leader (Ron DeSantis) has a docile legislature that lets him decide what everyone else is allowed to do and punishes those bold enough to ignore his orders.
That’s why he is running for President. He thinks the whole nation needs and wants a maximum leader with a reactionary view of behavior and morality.
Florida is where you are free to do whatever Ron DeSantis tells you to do and free to think what he believes. If you disagree, you are no longer free.
The Miami Herald editorial board says DeSantis has turned Florida into a mean state. No, you don’t want to make America Florida.
Florida, under Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican Legislature, is increasingly hard to recognize. It’s an intolerant and repressive place that bears scant resemblance to the Sunshine State of just a few years ago.
The 2023 legislative session cemented those appalling setbacks. Florida is now a state where government intrusion into the personal lives of Floridians is commonplace. What will it take for citizens to push back on this unprecedented encroachment on their rights? And, more broadly, what if Desantis supporters get what they want, which is to “make America Florida”?
The latest round of laws makes Florida sound more and more dystopian — something voters in the rest of the nation should note if they are considering what a DeSantis presidency could look like. The state has new rules for who can use which bathroom, what pronouns can be used in schools, which books can be taught and when women can get an abortion (almost never.) There are measures to strip union protections from public employees, keep transgender children and their parents from choosing to seek medical treatment, prevent universities from discussing diversity or inclusion and ban talk of gender identity or sexuality in schools all the way through 12th grade.
Diane Ravitch's blog 