The Political Whore

By Ben Luongo
PoHo contributor

Jeb Bush spoke recently with the Miami Herald about our education system and offered that America should be open to learning from other successful education systems around the world and adopting similar working models if they apply.

According to Bush:

We should be taking the best ideas from around the world, tearing down the barriers to let these things happen, and apply them in a way that we move away from this homogenous type education system where every child learns the same way and learns the same thing.

Watch the video and read the rest after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Officials with the National Civic League are arriving in Tampa today to begin prepping for the opening of registration on Tuesday night for the  2009 All-America City Awards conference. We’re highlighting one nominated project from each of the 30 competing cities (10 will be named AAC’s). Here is Kinston, N.C.

Kinston, North Carolina
Little-by-Little

In 2007, a local financial institution, the “little bank,” partnered with Partnership for Children along with Lenoir County and Southeast Elementary School to meet the challenge of providing a long-term mentoring program for elementary school children, and the “Little-by-Little” program was born. Each student is partnered with a mentor, or Buddy, from the community that nurtures their education and encourages them to dream big. Every nine weeks, the students are given specific goals in comprehension, behavioral, and accelerated reading. If the students meet their goals, $50 is put aside for the student’s college tuition. Students are also awarded a $50 end of year bonus if all four, nine week goals are met throughout the year. This money will build over time and if students continue to work hard, excel, and meet their goals, they could have up to $3000 to use for college tuition or books. The intention of the program is to work and follow these children until they have finished high school.  Other partners in the program include local attorneys, business owners, District Court Judges, Assistant DA, and local churches. Southeast Elementary and its collaborative partners believe that “little-by-little” is a way to provide support and teach children the value of setting and achieving goals both personal and educational.

Thirty cities, towns, neighborhoods and communities are vying for recognition as an All-America City at the June 16-19 conference at the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel. Each will give a short presentation on three public-private civic projects they undertook before a panel of judges names the best. Tampa is one of the finalists.

Former Tampa Mayor Sandy Freedman is the president of the National Civic League this year and a big proponent of these kinds of partnership projects. During her tenure, in 1990, Tampa was named an All-America City. Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason is also involved, as a member of the Host Committee.

By Matt Wiley
CL intern

A cool educational opportunity in our next featured community in the National Civic League’s 2009 All-America City Awards (the conference convenes in Tampa next week), here is Clinton, N.C.:

Clinton, N.C.
Interactive Whiteboards

Clinton City Schools (CCS) has made it a priority to equip schools with engaging technology to prepare students to face the future.  An integral part of this endeavor included the goal of outfitting each classroom with an interactive whiteboard (IW).  An IW links a computer desktop to the board’s surface to allow: teaching with computer software and internet browsers, manipulation of computer data using finger touch or styli, saving of information created on the IW to a computer, capture of student responses using “Audience Response System,” and interactive learning that totally engages students. In 2006, IWs were placed in five classrooms.  One third grade class showed improvement from 61% proficiency on end-of-grade pretests to 90.48% proficiency on end-of-grade tests.  The excitement of this technology spurred the community to collaborate with CCS to ensure every classroom within CCS had an IW. Collaborations between CCS, citizens, businesses and nonprofits resulted in a series of projects that enabled IWs to be placed in each CCS classroom.

Thirty cities, towns, neighborhoods and communities are vying for recognition as an All-America City at the June 16-18 conference at the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel. Each will give a short presentation on three public-private civic projects they undertook before a panel of judges names the best. Tampa is one of the finalists.

Former Tampa Mayor Sandy Freedman is the president of the National Civic League this year and a big proponent of these kinds of partnership projects. During her tenure, in 1990, Tampa was named an All-America City. Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason is also involved, as a member of the Host Committee.

Third graders at a museum as part of the Reading Academy. (photo: pal-item.com)

The National Civic League’s 2009 All-America City Awards conference convenes in Tampa next week. Here is another look at one of the 30 nominees that will present their best civic projects, Richmond, Ind.:

Richmond, Indiana
The Third Grade Reading Academy

Motivated by the Wayne County Learning Corporation’s Education Summit of October, 2007, the entire community set out to address the 30% high school drop out rate by raising third-grade reading levels. This community explored two approaches: one adult-centered, the other led by youth.  Adult-centered response:  Two local business people began and, with the help of over two hundred community contributors and volunteers, raised $150,000 and conducted the first Third Grade Reading Academy.  During the summer of 2008, a four-week intervention reading program was developed to generate an interest and enthusiasm for reading and to involve key local institutions. Of the 145 eligible students who had not passed their ISTEP (the state’s) Language Arts test, 118 participated and raised their scores by 50%. Youth-centered response: The youth believe that the key to addressing drop outs is to motivate through interactive activities inside and out of school, and cite three efforts. My Will is a weekly group meeting of up to 30 high school girls to address personal problems and support each other.  Stage One is Richmond Civic Theatre’s youth theatre involving 250 youth in up to three productions each year.  The net benefit is personal development and increased civic/community engagement.   Civic Hall is a 936 seat performing arts venue owned and operated by Richmond Community Schools providing “wonderful opportunities for students to perform in a professional setting.”

Former Tampa Mayor Sandy Freedman is the president of the National Civic League this year and a big proponent of these kinds of partnership projects. During her tenure, in 1990, Tampa was named an All-America City. Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason is also involved, as a member of the Host Committee.

Thirty cities, towns, neighborhoods and communities are vying for recognition as an All-America City at the June 16-18 conference at the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel. Each will give a short presentation on three public-private civic projects they undertook before a panel of judges names the best. Tampa is one of the finalists.

By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor, “feminist mother of twins” and political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field

If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be a lot like Jem Lugo, a bright and funny senior at Springstead High School in Hernando County. As valedictorian, she was tasked with writing a speech to deliver at her school’s graduation ceremony.

I’ve been to several commencement exercises and the speeches given by the smartest kids in class are usually devoid of humor and almost always ignored by the audience. After five years in education and countless ceremonies, not one speech stands out.

Jem is a bright girl. She’s heading to Harvard, after all. She researched speeches online and found they were boring and uninspiring. So she decided to be different.

For my readers, the story is a familiar one.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor
Catherine Durkin Robinson is a “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field.

Another Sickles’ goof or goof-up?

When I first heard about the bare vagina on display in the pages of Sickles High School’s 2009 yearbook, I laughed out loud.

One of those deep belly laughs that last for five minutes. My tongue hangs out. I grab my sides. The works. I could just picture the yearbook advisor catching shit. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Oh yes. Another grand example of a Tampa teacher’s piss-poor judgment.

Funny stuff.

Suddenly, I stopped laughing.

A 16-year-old had posed for a club picture without underwear and her hoo-ha was on display for the world to see. That’s what I’d been told. Who in their right mind would greenlight such a spread? Why would someone in the district support distributing the yearbook and suggest the Sickles junior “laugh it off?”

A few years ago, someone spotted a kid with the word “Fuck” on his shirt in a Sickles yearbook. Administrators went apeshit and demanded final say over all future yearbook editions.

Well, I thought, this changes things. What was going on at my old school?

See the photo in question after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor
Catherine Durkin Robinson is a “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field.

There’s a teacher at my old school who’s spreading misinformation based on faulty science and fundamentalist nonsense.

No, I’m not talking about Intelligent Design. What’s interesting is that this particular teacher would probably frown on such mindless stupidity. Yet she’s just as bad.

She is telling students about the dangers of vaccinating babies and toddlers.

“If you ever have children,” she tells her students, “don’t get them vaccinated. It could cause them to become autistic.”

Read the rest of this entry »

By State Rep. Rick Kriseman, D-St. Petersburg
PoHo contributor

Kriseman and his Republican colleague, Will Weatherford, have agreed to blog for us throughout the Florida Legislature’s 60-day session.

There is no “session” this week, meaning although we are in Tallahassee, only council and committee meetings can be found on the Week Two calendar, along with numerous visits from constituent groups. I spent most of Tuesday in the Energy & Utilities Policy Committee and the PreK-12 Policy Committee, where my service-learning bill passed, and where Rep. Will Weatherford presented and passed his resolution to revise Florida’s voter-approved constitutional amendment on class size by adding some flexibility to the counting process. While I understand satisfying the current class-size mandate is difficult, and that many school administrators and districts favor a re-vote because of the limited flexibility in the amendment, I do not support a change to the 2002 Constitutional amendment.

Last year, with unanimous and bipartisan support, my committee and the full House passed a bill that provided the needed flexibility for schools, and did so statutorily, rather than through a resolution sending the issue back to the ballot. Best of all, the bill still honored the will of the voters. However, because that bill did not pass the Senate this discussion has returned. Rep. Weatherford wants to go back to the voters and try and convince them they made a mistake in 2002. That is a risky proposition, because failure to obtain the support of 60 percent of the voters in the fall of 2010 means this problem won’t go away for quite awhile.

Hey, it’s another Tampa Bay teacher sex-related case. From TBO.com:

Police arrested an Azalea Middle School teacher Saturday on charges of sending pornography to a student.

Christy Lynn Martin, 32, 3457 Lynn Lake Drive S., was charged with sending pornographic photos to a 14-year-old boy’s cell phone. The boy is an eighth-grade student at Azalea Middle School, but is not a student in any of Martin’s classes, St. Petersburg Police said.

She is charged with one count of transmitting pornographic images through an electric device and one count of transmitting material harmful to a minor.

Martin was released just after midnight on $20,000 bail, according to the PCSO website. Updates later in the day said she and the boy exchanged photos via cell phone, and that the boy told a relative who told the boy’s mother, who told police.

By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor
Catherine Durkin Robinson is a “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field.

Tenure is a joke. It keeps bad teachers on the job and makes it difficult, if not impossible, to fire them. The CTA (Classroom Teachers Association) says tenure is necessary to protect teachers from batshit crazy administrators.

Nonsense.

What other job lets you underperform without repercussions, or allows a bad teacher to keep a job indefinitely until he/she either dies or retires?

Who do teachers think they are? Judges?

But when Florida lawmakers are faced with all the problems in Florida schools and then decide to make this a priority, isn’t that yet another negative and nasty sign that Florida teachers are not valued?

Read the rest of this entry »

The state hopes to get $3.5 billion in stimulus money earmarked for education, a big help in filling Florida’s budget hole.

But the Orlando Sentinel says not so fast there.

The daily reports that a provision in the economic recovery package calls for the stimulus money to go only to those states that can support “schools for the next two years at the levels they had in the 2005-06 school year.

“But the state is below that threshold,” the paper reports. “In fact, school funding coming directly from the state is now lower than it was in the 2004-05 school year. With Florida’s budget shortfall for next year ballooning toward $4 billion, it’s not clear it could meet that requirement.”

Read the story here.

This is just the start of some of the disruption and carnage from the state’s budget crisis and economic nosedive: the Pinellas County School Board has voted to close eight schools to save money, and to take a number of studnets off the bus.

The schools to be closed are:

Clearview Elementary
Coachman Fundamental (consolidate with Kennedy)
Gulf Beaches Elementary
Kings Highway Elementary
North Ward Elementary
Palm Harbor Elementary
Rio Vista Elementary
Southside Fundamental (consolidate with Mad. Beach)

(Download the school board’s presentation from Tuesday’s meeting here.

The biggest problem for affected parents: the new maps for where those displaced students will go won’t be published until February. The St. Petersburg Times wrote:

The uncertainty had many parents urging the district to provide more stability in the future. But officials said there were no guarantees in an era when tight budgets and declining enrollment will continue to pressure the district to make adjustments.

“I don’t think you have all the answers yet,” Laurie Clark, a parent at Palm Harbor Elementary, told the board.

“Where will my child go to school? ‘Somewhere’ isn’t an appropriate answer.”

Screw timeouts. This Lake County teacher straight-up body slams his students.

Apparently teacher Stephen Berry was messing around (and by that I do not mean like a predateacher) with a 14-year old student when things went a little too far and the student wouldn’t calm down. So Berry did what any kickin’-ass-and-takin’-names teacher would do: He body slammed the punk.

Word. I’ll bet the kid learned his lesson that day.

The whole thing was recorded by a someone with a cell phone.

While it is unknown what exactly brought this incident on, the kid must have deserved it because the parents (at least so far) have decided not to press charges. That’s right, they have decided (at least so far) not to press charges.

There must be more to this story than has come out yet. A teacher freakin’ body slams a student and the parents decide it’s no big deal?

Maybe they are waiting to speak to a lawyer so they can sue. There’s more long-term justice in a large cash settlement than a criminal prosecution, after all.

Berry has resigned and the Lake County Sheriff’s office is reportedly investigating the incident. Lawyers everywhere are salivating at the possibilities.

Stay tuned.

And I ask this question because of this part of the Florida Baptist Witness news story on a group of anti-Darwinians (22 of ‘em, count them) who signed a letter to the state Board of Education requesting it not to include the word “eee-voh-LOO-shun” in the state public school science curriculum. Opponent Kim Kendall of suburban Jacksonville was quoted saying:

“There have been public hearings that were abruptly canceled; there were no press releases issued for the hearings that were scheduled or for the canceled hearings. The [Internet] survey was just too complicated and difficult to navigate for even a sophisticated user like myself.”

I mean, most of us can figure out the Internet, even the tricky parts of it (like how to delete your Facebook account.)

The new standards aren’t that different from the old ones, but do use the word evolution. One instance:

BIG IDEA 15: Diversity and Evolution of Living Organisms
A. Evolution is the organizing principle of life science.
B. Evolution is supported by multiple forms of evidence.
C. Natural Selection is a primary mechanism leading to change over time in organisms.

Well, that seems pretty straightforward. All three items are scientifically valid, as far as we know right now or may ever know. Opponents, however, want to strip such ideas out of the standards and leave wiggle room for other non-scientific explanations, including creationism and Intelligent Design. They say Darwin’s theory of evolution has too many holes in it. The only problem is that science, as a whole, doesn’t buy their argument, and science gets to decide what is appropriate for science. As I wrote about two years ago, researchers trying to bolster the hypothesis behind Intelligent Design (that all living creatures demonstrate evidence not of evolutionary changes being the driving force behind their existence but the telltale signs of the hand of an intelligent Creator) might one day succeed and move it from hypothesis to scientific theory. But that day doesn’t seem near, given the utter lack of scientific progress to date by some very determined researchers who believe that hypothesis.

The Florida Board of Education is holding its final public hearing on this issue today as I write. Updates later on what went on, but just in watching the (crappily) streamed version, I heard a lot of opponents talking about allowing competing ideas to challenge accepted scientific notions. What they don’t get is that is already going on; any scientist or researcher is free to pursue studies and examinations questioning evolution theory, and that goes on all the time. Those discussions, however, are for the scientific world to sort out, through peer-reviewed publications and rigorous testing of assumptions, new ideas, old ideas, hypotheses and theories. Teaching evolution in school doesn’t change that ongoing scientific process; it strengthens it as students learn the leading theory for how our natural world is organized and how it came about. They learn the scientific process, just as they learn faith in church or at home or in the woods gathered around a pentagram with shadowy demons dancing in the green fire.

Those children could grow up one day to be the ones who find the answer that overturns Darwin and finds out just exactly how we did come to be, scientifically speaking.

Then again, they may not.

(photo credits and copyright info here.)

Sure, they managed to force the anti-gay rights Marriage Amendment onto the November ballot, but for the rest of the social conservative movement, it hasn’t been a great 12 months. Their top presidential candidate, Fred Thompson, bit the dust without a fight. Mike Huckabee never really had a chance. And now, according to the Florida Baptist Witness executive editor James A. Smith Sr., it looks like Florida educators are going to do (gasp!!) actually put science into the science curriculum:

In spite of growing concern and opposition, Florida education leaders are on the brink of requiring an evolution-as-dogma approach to teaching origins in public schools in the Sunshine State. Fortunately, there’s still time to change the outcome on this critical matter.

All the state committee looking at the science curriculum for public schools is doing is recognizing the vast storehouse of evidence that supports evolution, as first posited by Charles Darwin. I wrote about the movement to interject creationism or Intelligent Design two years ago in CL and in this blog post last year, and the fight continues today. The Baptist Witness writes that anti-Darwinists aren’t trying to put ID or creationism into the curriculum:

Like the first draft, what is missing from the revised standards is any recognition that there is controversy about Darwinian evolution and that students should learn about that controversy. Whatever happened to academic freedom and exposing students to all sides of a debate? For the evolution-as-dogma crowd, there is only one side when it comes to Darwin.

This arrogant approach, however, has prompted a growing backlash from parents, teachers, interested citizens and at least a dozen school districts in Florida that have passed resolutions urging the State Board of Education to not impose the evolution-as-dogma model on their school districts.

Contrary to claims of Darwin’s defenders in the education and science establishments, few opponents of the proposed science standards are requesting the addition of creationism or Intelligent Design in the standards. Exposing students to serious, scholarly critiques of Darwinian evolution is all that is asked for from most critics of the standards. Such an approach to teaching evolution is hardly unique or unprecedented.

Challenging a theory with scientific evidence is what science is all about; no theory can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, but they can be disproved. Theories, however, have an extensive bulk of scientific evidence that supports them; Intelligent Design and creationism has no such evidence in wide acceptance, and hardly any evidence at all, even in the disputed category. That doesn’t make those ideas wrong; it just makes them unproven hypotheses (at best), far from being scientific theory and not of value in a science class.

The state Board of Governors of the college system has taken one step in the right direction and another in a terrible direction. From Shannon CVS at the Times:

The board in charge of Florida’s 11 public universities chose the former Thursday, giving college leaders the green light to slash overall enrollment, lay off faculty and staff members, and take other money-cutting measures, all aimed at preserving the value of a four-year degree amid the state’s budget crisis.

The Board of Governors also voted to raise undergraduate, in-state tuition and fees by 8 percent next year, to $83.58 per credit hour, or $186 more per year for a full-time student.

It’s about time we raised tuition, as much as it pains me to say that (full disclosure: I am a graduate student at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg), but Florida’s been out of whack for decades in the amount of money that students pay vs. how much the state subsidizes. Now, with budget shortfalls and the tax crisis, the Board is taking a moderate action, given that it considered raising tuition 13 percent a year for the next five years before falling back to 8 percent.

But what troubles me is the other faculty cuts and enrollment caps that are accompanying the tuition increases, making it harder to get a higher education in Florida at a time when we could use more trained and intelligent young people for our work force. Again, in full disclosure, I’ve got a son who wouldn’t mind being admitted to a Florida public university in a year and a half. And I am a graduate of the University of Florida myself.

Already our public schools are mired at the bottom of national lists in terms of money spent per pupil. One board member worried that the same fate awaits our college system:

“We have to raise the tuition so that universities can go forward with their missions,” said board member Gus Stavros. “We have the worst faculty-student ratio in the nation, we’re 42nd for need-based aid. I’m embarrassed. I’ve never been involved in a mediocre system in my life until now. Let’s do it.”

We should be expanding access to our universities, not curtailing it. We should be providing better educations in our community colleges. Instead, we’re the cheapest because legislators want to keep Florida a cheap place to live. The Times pointed out that even the aggressive 13 percent tuition increase ” would have put Florida’s tuition and fees at about No. 37 among the 50 states, compared to being the least expensive now at $3,361 a year.”

It’s great to be less expensive, but you get what you pay for. If we’re cheap, we’re getting cheap educations. And now fewer and fewer kids will be able to get even that.

(photo: Ben Ostrowsky, some rights reserved)