Blasphemy Right Here In Black and White

'We give them less of everything'

Thanks to The Gradebook for the above link.

The blasphemy can be seen right here in the two words "not so".

TAMPA - It’s a common story line: If kids do poorly in school, it must be because of them and their parents. Not so, said Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust.

"OMG", I could say in today's vernacular. Frequent readers of my other two blogs would recognize that I mock how "the system" blames students and parents for the failure of the public school system. Just as members of "the system" resent being blamed for the failure of the public school system, I resent that the students and parents are blamed for the failure.

I can already see that Ms. Haycock's statements will be discounted because of the position she holds. According to the memo, here is what it says:

"Hosted by the DOE, What’s Working is a series of meetings designed to inform education policy makers (such as district school superintendents; community college, state college, and state university system presidents; legislators and legislative staff; business stakeholders; State Board of Education members; and DOE staff), of current education trends and promote an open discussion of new methods for achieving greater academic success in Florida’s teaching institutions."

So what. I could speak to education policy makers and have done so many times. They discounted me, too.

You're Nobody Until You Go To College

The above title must be the sign in every guidance counselor's office in every high school in the state. Perhaps the reason is that everyone knows that a high school diploma isn't worth much.

Despite passing FCAT, most PHCC students need remedial courses - St. Petersburg Times

Thanks to The Gradebook for the link above.

What is this all about? Kids are graduating from our high schools, so what is the problem? The high schools are doing their job, so get off their backs. I was told for many, many years that the education professionals were experts and I was just a parent who was too emotionally involved to be objective about what was going on in the classroom. Just leave the education to them and make sure my kid was in his/her seat on money-counting day was the message du jour.

There must be a heck of a lot money being poured into making parents be accountable for the education of their children. The reason I have come to this conclusion is that every time I read how the FCAT and graduation rates have little correlation to the level of education that a student actually obtained, I always see a comment that the failure of the system is due to the students and the parents.

Here are a few quotes from the article that reminds of us whose fault it is:

"They passed (the FCAT), so they're thinking they did all right.........

..."And it is working to get the word out that students really do need to take college-prep courses if they're planning on going to college."

""We lecture them," said Pat Barton, a guidance counselor at Central. "We don't start in the senior year; we start in the freshman year. We tell them, 'You have to be able to pass tests to do college work.'

""But they don't all listen," she added."

""Many of them don't believe they truly belong there, but they're taking a chance on you and the college," she said."

To me, the most interesting part of this article is how the upper and lower level educational systems blame each other. I think it is odd that the kids are left out of this accountability debate:

"Beard, the PHCC vice president, said he has often wished that K-12 districts would do a more thorough job of teaching students about careers and what they will need to succeed in college.

"Either (students) are not informed, or they're informed but it doesn't quite register what courses they'll need in college," he said.

But Hernando superintendent Wayne Alexander said many in the K-12 world are frustrated by what they perceive as a lack of accountability in higher education.

"One of the things the state has yet to do is define what college readiness is," he said, wishing aloud for a state testing system that would encompass post-secondary education. "It really boils down to who's going to hold the professors accountable."

I can hear Elmer Fudd telling us how "vehwy, vehwy scary" it would be if he was a student. If the leaders of school systems don't know how to help kids be "college ready", how the hell does a kid know?

Oh, I forgot. It would be the parents to know what means "college ready". You know, the parents who leave the education to the expert systems.

Naming New Schools In The School Board Image

Griffin family wants school named for strawberry pioneer - St. Petersburg Times



On my other blogs, I have written many times about my perception that "the public school system" treats students and parents with an arrogant attitude. When ignorance is combined with this arrogance, students lose.

I am always challanged to demonstrate concrete examples of what I am talking about when I talk about "arrogance". I may not be able to take a picture of it, but I know what it is when I see it.

Within the above link, there is information about how the Hillsborough County School Board names new schools.

Maybe this is a concrete example of arrogance:

District policy dictates that schools be named for individuals "who have rendered outstanding service to public education, such as U.S. presidents, school board members, educators, and outstanding citizens." Schools can also be named for geographic locations, groups or clubs.

There are a lot of scientific studies that expose the significance of how one's perception and beliefs are directly influenced by the group they are in. Maybe it's just me, but how does a group of school board members overcome their belief that they "render outstanding service to public education"?

In this specific case, the person who is seeking to have this new school after them has the same surname as a school board member. It will be interesting to see how the current politics effect this vote.

Stephen Gorham Exceeds Expectations for School Board - EsKay

Stephen Gorham Exceeds Expectations for School Board - EsKay

Imagine a "Parenting Handbook" written by "Educators"

I am well aware of the fact that many employees of the public education system think that parents are dysfunctional and therefore their (parents) kids are a valid reason for the current status of the public education system.

With all of the disdain that the public school system has for the public, it would stand to reason that the public school system could easily tell the public how to act. But when one looks at the types of policies that school districts develop and then have to enforce, one must wonder what the outcomes would be.

I have said somewhere before that "zero-tolerance" equals "zero-education".

Our public school system will defend to it's death that behavior is not something it has to teach.



Female Student Suspended After Hand Gesture Deemed Threat - News Story - WFTV Orlando

How The Power of Local Public Education Officials Effects Outcomes

I hate reading publications where the average number of syllables is over 3, but I managed to make it through.

Reconstructing Local Governance in American Public Education: Politics, Policy, and Process


What do you think about how one's local public school administration fits into this scheme of things?

I have highlighted a few points below.

"The political tradition of local school governance predates the existence of the United States. Yet the most prominent methods for selecting local authorities have evolved considerably from their colonial origins in response to the changing political climate of the nation, constituent demands, and legislative innovation."

"local officials hold significant power that constrains the principal-agent hierarchies forged by vertical divisions in the federal system (Chubb 1985; Peterson, Rabe, and Wong 1986)."

"For those local school districts with recurrent patterns of fiscal, managerial, and academic failure, twenty states transferred governance authority from local school boards to contracted management teams with the legal approval of the chief state school officer and state board of education. On the other hand, thirty-nine states authorized the creation of charter schools with limited bureaucratic constraints and regulatory oversight to introduce market-driven competition as an alternative to traditional public schooling and reshape the political incentives of school board members (Hill, Pierce, and Guthrie 1997)."

The States that started it all:

"The passage of governance reform began with the state takeover of Newark Public Schools in New Jersey and Pike County School District in Kentucky. To fully explain the competitive legal context for different reform strategies, we create two independent models of the diffusion process for state takeover reform and charter school legislation."

Money speaks:

"While the national government may signal preferences to state legislatures using several different mechanisms, the availability of federal funding is among the most influential determinants of policy innovation."

"In 1994, one major goal when national lawmakers reauthorized federal spending was dual endorsement of charter school laws and state takeover as a reform strategy."

States can't borrow as much as the federal government, which means the federal government has expansive borrowing capacity - wow how is that playing out today!?.:

"The annual budgetary process is (sic "in"?)many state legislatures regularly elicits the most divisive confrontations in American government due to the considerable level of state expenditures for social welfare programs and electoral constraints on state revenue collections. Without the expansive borrowing capacity of the federal government, state lawmakers cannot invest their political capital in expensive reform proposals during budgetary years characterized by fiscal insolvency. At the same time, local interests are well-positioned to maintain current governance arrangements when an overall budgetary crisis shifts public attention toward statewide fiscal stability rather than an interconnected network of local governmental activities during the limited duration of state legislative sessions."

"In contrast, we hypothesize the opposite relationship for states’ adoption of charter school laws because policy entrepreneurs have consistently framed the creation of privately-operated charter schools as a market-oriented, efficient policy option in statehouse deliberations(Hassel 1999; Mintrom 2003)."

"First, how do state bureaucratic institutions respond to an unprecedented level of public and private demands from governors, business leaders, constituents, and interest groups without the reinforcement of a competitive electoral process? And, in the broader consideration of state policymaking, when are elected lawmakers willing to challenge the political and economic constraints of divided localism in order to pursue localized governance reform?"

So, what do you think?

Alright, Which Is It? Teachers or Families?

I just can't seem to get the message right.

Is public education good because of the teachers?

Is public education bad because of the teachers?

Is public education bad because of the kids and parents?

Is public education good because of the kids and parents?

Is it the teachers that make a difference?

Is it the kids and parents that make a difference?

Nothing like a squibble squabble about school recognition money to bring out some interesting statements that fit somewhere in the above questions.

Do I get a hint of suggestion that it is the kids and parents that make the difference?

What about the schools that are stuggling? How many of these schools getting award money are in nice neighborhoods, or are filled with middle/upper class kids, with all teh best teachers who don't want to work with the trouble children? The schools who need more funding are those who are stuggling.

Posted by: Hallie | September 17, 2008 at 12:07 PM

Yep, that's great. East Lake and Palm Harbor High both received close to $200,000. They may have great teachers but replace those teachers with all of the teachers from an under-performing school and the grade would be the same. It's a reflection of the student demographics more than anything else. And PHUHS with 2 magnet programs that never should have been given to a school in that location.

Posted by: Diana | September 17, 2008 at 01:06 PM

Thanks to The Gradebook, the above comments can be found at the the link below.


256 Tampa Bay schools get state checks

Is This What They Call "Dumbing Down Education" In The Name of "The Business of Education"?

Jacksonville.com: Metro: Story: Schools chief asks to delay GPA rule


Someone help me out on this one.

"Students in five high school and four middle school accelerated academic programs, including Stanton College Preparatory School and Paxon School for Advanced Studies, must maintain a 2.0 grade-point average to remain in the programs."

This one pits the (some) educators against the (some)parents and students.

"The board was initially going to discuss possible changes to the 2.0 GPA standard at its workshop meeting today."

Surely they were going to raise the requirement from 2.0 to 2.5. After all, it does say "Advanced Studies". Surely any educational system worth it's weight in professional educators would understand that "advanced" means more than "average".

But we are left with this:

"On Sept. 2, the board heard from a number of parents and students from Stanton College Preparatory School who were vehemently against lowering the 2.0 GPA requirement."

"The superintendent of Duval County's public schools will recommend today that the School Board delay discussions about whether to lower the academic standards for nine accelerated middle and high school programs until the end of the year."

Please help me understand how this is a sound educational decision. Are the parents out of line?

The Difficulty of School Reform

I have long wanted to know the origin of "public schools". I finally stumbled on a source of information that says it started in 1834. Seems like a substantial amount of time has gone by.

I have often wondered if the orginal design and/or concept of our public school system is no longer functional.

Are we trying to fit a round peg into a square hole?

Do other industries constantly "reform" or do they "re-design"?

Trying to make sense of it all.


The Difficulty of School Reform

Let Us Start Here

"Politics makes strange bedfellows"

Political interests can bring together people who otherwise have little in common. This saying is adapted from a line in the play The Tempest, by William Shakespeare: “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” It is spoken by a man who has been shipwrecked and finds himself seeking shelter beside a sleeping monster.

It has to be rough not knowing who one is sleeping with. Especially when the one you are sleeping with tonight was last night sleeping with someone who does not have your best interest at sake. In fact, this shared bedfellow may be out to harm you.

In today's world, it is easier to find out who's sleeping where and who's cheating who.

I will start with a link to who is at least paying for a place on the bed. Click on a name, then click on the election year, then click on the "Contributions as Excel"

Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections - Buddy Johnson

Politics, Business and Education

I have stayed away from politics all of my life.

Since I started blogging over a year ago, I am realizing more and more the influence of politics on education. I now have a desire to explore what I read about regarding the influence and effects of politics on our local education system.


I had to learn about the local education system in order to obtain an education for my disabled son. My other two kids had the ability to become educated through many avenues. My disabled son was highly dependent on the people and environment that was immediate to him. While my two "regular ed" kids could make up for any deficiencies in their educational environment, my disabled son could not.

I like to explore the outside influences that effect what happens in the classroom with students. I hear and read about the dedication and committment of many teachers and some school administrators. When the education setting doesn't work, Arrogance with ignorance have been influences I am familiar with. Politics and business and how they relate to each other is something I want to learn more about.