Category Archives: Florida Senate

Senate Education Package Announced

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The Senate Education Committee released this press report with its education priorities.

Family Empowerment Program. Vouchers to private schools paid through the public school per student program funds. These vouchers are capped at 15,000 students for this year. Families with incomes up to 260% of the poverty level will receive 95% of the district average cost. I do not know how this voucher plan is legal. Florida’s constitution prohibits vouchers.

Recruitment, Retention, and Recognition bonuses. The SAT/ACT scores are no longer required. Recruitment bonuses are for specific core academic areas of need. Retention bonuses are targeted and include a gain score component. Recognition bonuses are determined by the principal.

Remove Barriers to Teacher Certification This seems to reduce costs of retake exams.

Revise School Facility Plant Survey and Student Cost per Station Requirements to Allow More Flexibility. This is a much needed revision of how new schools are funded.

Enhance Support for Community Wrap-Around Services. These community schools would be given support for after school programs, extended day or year instruction, counseling and other services. There are some excellent community schools, and this bill supports their expansion. They are district managed.

Enhance Safety and Security.. This is the Guardian program which allows districts flexibility to move funds from school operations (mostly instruction) to capital outlay (mostly facilities and equipment) to meet state mandates for school hardening.

We do not have the House priorities yet.

Making Sense of the Session to Come

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Ideas are swirling around. It sounds a lot like guns for money. Diaz wants guns in schools. Districts want to fix holes in buildings. The governor wants bonuses for teachers. Many want an escape hatch from Jeb Bush’s A + Plan that supported Common Core. I wonder about that. It will not change the testing mania simply because the federal government requires annual testing. It will create more havoc to change once again. I did a count of all the curriculum changes in the last twenty years. It is unbelievable. How teachers are supposed to know what and how to teach and students are to know what is important from one year to the next is a mystery to me.

I did another check on the Bush A+ Plan with which our legislature is enamored. When competition among teachers and schools for bonuses don’t work to raise achievement, it is a problem for the legislature. Did you realize that now that the legislature knows that students are graduating from high school and need remediation in community colleges that the legislature changed the law? Remediation is no longer required. Simple fix that?

This year’s simple fix to Florida’s relatively low graduation rate is to reduce the number of credits required. Some students may be redirected to vocational/trade certification programs that require fewer credits. Actually, many of those certification programs are quite rigorous. So, it is worth considering alternatives if they are not dumbed down. Instead students need a lift up, but that does cost money.

The discussion comes down to the usual smoke and mirrors. The governor would move the bonuses into a different pot of money…the per student allocation schools have to operate. It would look like schools were getting more money. The House does not want even the appearance of a tax increase, so schools will not get the benefit of the increase in property values. But, those holes in the buildings leak. Something must be done.

From what I hear, it will be a tradeoff…guns for money with some whispers about a little religion thrown in by extending the personal learning accounts for private schools. Remember that about 83% of the children attending private schools on tax credit scholarships are going to small, poorly staffed religious schools.
Those schools are getting more economically and racially segregated. Children do not learn well in those settings, and hiding that fact in private schools is unfair to children and their families.

What a world!

Getting to know Manny Diaz: Senate Education Chair

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Politico interviewed Senator Diaz about his priorities for education policy. He wants to expand school choice and to review the guardian program that is intended to provide security assistants for schools. The interview also refers to Diaz’s support for a state level charter school institute. Such an institute would centralize the preparation of charter school proposals that must then be authorized by local school boards. This is an idea that has taken many forms over the past several years. It includes advocacy for a High Impact Charter Network to allow charters to expand in new areas without local board approval. Another unstated form was behind the 2018 Amendment 8 constitutional revision proposal that Florida’s Supreme Court took off the ballot. The ballot language referred to state control of schools not established by local school boards. Informed educators would recognize the intent of the language, but voters in general would not. Thus, the proposal was removed from the November 2018 ballot, but it is likely to reappear in some form in the 2019 legislative session.

Florida Senate Education Leadership Named

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So,,,,newly elevated from the Florida House, 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 year he served in the Florida House. We really do not need to have Academica lead educational policy for the state of Florida.

It will be interesting to see how Diaz and Senate Pro Tempore David Simmons will work together. Simmons lost his chairmanship of the education committee last year when he opposed HB 7069. Montford and Simmons are supportive of public school funding. Of course, the House leadership will continue to push school choice. How will any serious review of the impact of choice be conducted?

It is time for a statewide push in support of public schools. To see the other education committee members, click on STATE NEWS.

The Tide is Turning Against Education Reform

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Hints about the education agendas of the Florida legislature are beginning to emerge. House Speaker Oliva (R. Miami-Dade) wants to create education savings accounts to expand schools choice. Senate leaders call for a review of school choice and improved funding for public schools. See the report by the Tallahassee Democrat here.

The trend to reevaluate school choice policy is not unique to the Florida Senate. The Fordham Institute, a pro-choice think tank, published a report called ‘The End of Educational Policy’. The authors state that the fight over education reform is a draw. The authors acknowledge that it has been a ‘Lost Decade’ for achievement gains as reflected by the flat NAEP scores for the past ten years. We can expect ‘incremental growth in school choice options, but no appetite for big, bold new initiatives’. There is, in other words, no looming take over of public schools.

What can be expected? Modest proposals for better management and oversight of charter schools for one thing. Other goals of the Fordham Institute include better teacher preparation, and improved career and technical education programs to help foster higher academic skills for high school graduates.

Nowhere in the Fordham article is any mention of improving incentives to help the teaching profession attract and retain more qualified college graduates. Nor is there any acknowledgement of the decline in funding for public education infrastructure. Instead, there is a continued reliance on testing and accountability ratings as the means to improve our schools. There is a call to focus on the achievement gains of all students, not just those children struggling to become proficient on state tests.

The Florida legislature will no doubt make some effort to curb the abuses of school choice management practices. If these measures are to be meaningful, they must address the for-profit management of charters, the lack of standards for private schools receiving tax credit scholarships, and the irresponsible creation of charters that screen and dismiss students rather than address their achievement needs. Perhaps the Senate will call for a moratorium on the expansion of choice in order to reevaluate education policy.

Florida Twenty Years Later: Social Impact of Privatization

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The fourth piece “Twenty Years Later: The SociaI Impact of Privatizaton” covers resegregation and the result of the ‘separate but equal’ philosophy governing school choice. Separate is not equal. You can read it here.

For your convenience, I have included the links to the first three articles below.

The third piece: “Twenty years later: Who Benefits, Not Schools!” covers the impact of choice policies on civil rights, funding, local vs. state control, and accountability. One might ask: Who benefits in a system that generates so much conflict? Politicians and profiteers, but not the public may well be the answer. Read it here.

Here is Part 2 of the series I did for Diane Ravitch on where the lack of common rules governing charter and private schools leads. The simple answer is profiteering, corruption and charter school closures.

The first post “Florida Twenty Years Later: Undermining Public Schools” covers the false assumptions behind the choice movement i.e. choice saves money and spurs innovation. What really has happened the last twenty years to school facilities, teachers, and the learning process that demonstrate Florida schools are nearing a crisis? You can read it here.

Florida Twenty Years Later: Profits, Corruption, Closure

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Here is Part 2 of the series I did for Diane Ravitch on where the lack of common rules governing charter and private schools leads. The simple answer is profiteering, corruption and charter school closures.

The first post “Florida Twenty Years Later: Undermining Public Schools” covers the false assumptions behind the choice movement i.e. choice saves money and spurs innovation. What really has happened the last twenty years to school facilities, teachers, and the learning process that demonstrate Florida schools are nearing a crisis? You can read it here.

Florida Twenty Years Later: Undermining Public Schools

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Diane Ravitch asked me to do a series on my reflections about the impact of school choice in Florida. I did four articles that will appear daily in her blog.

The first post “Florida Twenty Years Later: Undermining Public Schools” appeared in her blog today. It covers the false assumptions behind the choice movement i.e. choice saves money and spurs innovation. What really has happened the last twenty years to school facilities, teachers, and the learning process that demonstrate Florida schools are nearing a crisis? You can read it here.

The second piece: “Twenty Years Later: Impact of Charter and Private Sector Schools” summarizes where the lack of common rules governing schools leads. The simple answer is profiteering, corruption and charter school closures.

The third piece: “Twenty years later: Who Benefits, Not Schools!” covers the impact of choice policies on civil rights, funding, local vs. state control, and accountability. One might ask: Who benefits in a system that generates so much conflict? Politicians and profiteers, but not the public may well be the answer.

The fourth piece “Twenty Years Later: The SociaI Impact of Privatizaton” covers resegregation and the result of the ‘separate but equal’ philosophy governing school choice. Separate is not equal.

Separation of Church and State Scorecard

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ACLU keeps a scorecard on how Florida’s legislators votes on civil rights and civil liberties legislation. Here is a link to the records for four measures of interest: immigration, LBGTQ Rights, criminal justice reform, free speech, and church and state, . You can look up how each member of your legislative delegation voted on bills from the 2018 session. ACLU positions are listed. These may or may not be the same as LWVF positions. Click here.