Pulling the trigger for failure
Pushing the learning bar ever higher for public school students and making schools and educators accountable for their students’ failing grades have been guiding posts in Florida’s education landscape for more than a decade. During that time, Florida has been recognized as a national leader in accountability and tracking student achievement to pinpoint deficiencies so that students’ performance can improve in reading, math and a host of other subjects.
But now Florida Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson is pushing a new set of rules, to be considered by the state Board of Education next Tuesday, that would ignore year to year progress by students (now used to grade schools and districts statewide).
Instead, the state would rush new reading proficiency standards to an all-or-nothing level that virtually guarantees failure with a capital F. Unless at least 25 percent of students score “proficient” in reading on the more rigorous FCAT 2.0, a new version of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, a school would get an automatic F....
We support accountability measures and an ever-higher bar for achievement, but the way these proposals have been crafted — without input from superintendents, teachers and other stakeholders — there is rising suspicion that the agenda isn’t about improving public schools but simply destroying them.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/22/2655530/pulling-the-trigger-for-failure.html#storylink=cpy
Nothing suspicious here. Robinson was hired to privatize the Florida Public Schools - he and others like him pretend to be saviors of the kids who are failing, then exclude them from attendance at the alternative privatized charter. They use the deficiencies of disadvanaged students in the worst of ways. Business as usual in Florida.
Gerard Robinson is the president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. BAEO is a national nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to actively support parental choice to empower families and to increase quality educational options for Black children. Prior to his position at BAEO, Mr. Robinson served as a senior research associate for the School Choice Demonstration Project at the University of Arkansas from 2006 to 2007, and as a senior fellow at the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University from 2004 to 2006. Mr. Robinson has published various articles on education. Mr. Robinson received a Master of Education degree from Harvard University, a Bachelor of Arts from Howard University, and an Associate of Arts from El Camino Community College. He is completing a Ph.D. at the University of Virginia.
http://www.state.gov/p/io/unesco/members/111262.htm
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