This is a pretty troubling statement: "...much of Scott's education agenda focuses on doing away with what he calls an "outdated system" that relies too heavily on traditional schools. Technological advances mean students don't need to be in school buildings to take classes..."
While this may be the solution for certain privileged students, this approach is very problematic for poor, minority first-generation college students because it removes opportunities to gain the number one factor that leads to further opportunity: social capital (i.e., PEOPLE)!
The notion of offering parent choice is completely void of responding to many parent's choice to have equitable schools in their communities. Not all families and communities advocate for individualistic approaches to education reform.
Love thy neighbor, right?
You can check out Bush's "Foundation for Florida's Future" campaign, which includes their legislative agenda.
-Patricia
Republicans tell critics to stop worrying. But they also promise major reforms, including merit pay.
By Leslie Postal and Dave Weber, Orlando Sentinel
November 13, 2010
Former Gov. Jeb Bush shook up Florida's education establishment and sparked major reforms during his eight years in office.
Now, Gov.-elect Rick Scott is ready to take the baton and finish what Bush began.
While Republicans are energized, critics are worried that Florida's new governor is preparing to dismantle public education.
"Everyone has deep, deep concerns," said Gay Parker head of the Seminole Education Association. "He has made his education platform fairly clear, and it is privatizing education."
But GOP lawmakers insist that public schools won't be going away, just changing.
They agree that Scott — a former health care executive who won his first bid for elected office — will try to expand the Bush era reforms. But they also point out that similar reforms, such as merit pay for teachers, are happening across the country and are now embraced in large part by President Barack Obama.
'Outdated system'
Bush, first elected in 1998, ushered in what he called an education "renaissance" in his first year in office, passing laws to grade public schools, expand standardized testing such as the FCAT and offer private-school tuition vouchers to students. I
Scott pledges to embrace those goals. And it's no coincidence that the Foundation for Florida's Future, a group created by Bush, is involved in developing Scott's education policies.
"We are very excited about the incoming team as far as the commitment to education reform," said Jaryn Emhof, spokesman for the foundation. "You have an entire focus on education right now."
Although Scott has not announced specific proposals for his first legislative session, he advocates "the right learning environment for each student, not the bureaucracy."
That means more choices for students outside traditional schools. It also means new ways to evaluate and pay teachers that are based on student success, not years on the job. And it means continued focus on school performance and accountability and a continued push to make sure students leave high school ready for college or work.
But much of Scott's education agenda focuses on doing away with what he calls an "outdated system" that relies too heavily on traditional schools. Technological advances mean students don't need to be in school buildings to take classes, he said, and parents should have more choices about how their children are educated.
To that end, lawmakers and educators expect a push to expand charter schools, online learning through virtual schools and taxpayer-financed tuition vouchers for private schools.
All of which will chip away at the traditional public schools, which could end up with less money, fewer students and reduced program offerings, critics say.
"I am concerned about the dismantling of public education brick by brick," said Sen. Frederica Wilson, D- Miami Gardens, a staunch opponent of the direction Republicans have been taking Florida's schools.
Merit pay revisited
Other Democrats and plenty of educators share Wilson's fears. They are particularly nervous about a new push toward a merit-pay law for teachers.
The Legislature passed a controversial merit-pay bill last spring that was derided by many teachers and then vetoed by Gov. Charlie Crist. Under that proposal, teacher pay and job-security were based in large part on student test scores.
A new version is expected to be debated when the next legislative session starts in March. Lawmakers feel confident they can get a law passed, but they also say they will look at tamer versions devised with more participation from educators.
"We found out in this past session that you can't push something through so quickly that has such an impact on the educational system and not bring everyone to the table and allow them a voice," said Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey.
Fasano said in his district the bill passed by the Legislature was criticized even by members of his local Republican executive committee.
The Florida Education Association, which backed Scott's opponent, Alex Sink, welcomes a chance to help shape legislation, though the union isn't confident it will be included.
"If you are going to make a radical change in a profession, you certainly ought to talk to those in the profession and get their thoughts on it," said Mark Pudlow, the union's spokesman.
Central Florida school board members hope merit pay isn't taken up in Scott's first year in office, though they concede a delay isn't likely. They want a chance to work out their federal Race to the Top grant program proposals, which also includes merit-pay provisions, before details are muddied by a new state law.
"Race to the Top needs to be looked at as R & D, research and development," said Candace Lankford, chairman of the Volusia County School Board and the president of the Florida School Boards Association. "We need to be allowed to take the time to work through these complicated issues and not do it in one legislative session."
Despite campaign promises, Scott's education agenda could be slowed by Florida's still sputtering economy that next year is expected to mean a state budget shortfall of $2.5 billion or more. And although education is important, Scott has said job creation is his number one goal.
"We'll try to live within our means and at the same time try to assure education is given a top priority," said Senator–elect David Simmons, a Longwood Republican who previously served in the House of Representatives.
Scott wants to change how schools are funded, reducing school property taxes by up to 19 percent and filling the gap with other state funds.
Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, a former Volusia school administrator heavily involved in education issues during her stint in the Legislature, said that plan worries her.
"Certainly we want to reduce taxes, but we don't want to hurt education," Lynn said, adding that Scott may have to temper some of his camping promises once in office.
"He may change his thinking on some things when he sees how the process works."
Leslie Postal can be reached at lpostal@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5273. Dave Weber can be reached at dweber@orlandosentinel.com or 407-883-7885.
Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Nonprofit looks to increase male black and Hispanic elementary teachers
Foundation ready to pay education costs if they are willing to teach.
Posted: October 5, 2010
By Topher Sanders
Joshua Shubert sometimes thinks his third-grade teacher, Wayne Mitchell, is mean. Octavia Shubert, Joshua's mother, disagrees.
"No, he's firm," Shubert says of Mitchell. "And that's what I like. Especially [for] a young black man with the way the world is today."
Mitchell, 45, in his fourth year teaching at George Washington Carver Elementary, is a rare commodity in education: a male elementary teacher. Even more rare, Mitchell is a black male elementary teacher.
"They actually need somebody to get them on track and do a little bit more than just educate," Mitchell said of his students, particularly the boys. "So I sometimes feel more like a father. You need to give them a lot of love."
The new Jacksonville-based nonprofit organization, Achieve Instill Inspire Foundation, is looking to make teachers like Mitchell less rare across the state. The foundation wants to provide scholarships to black and Latino men who will commit to pursuing degrees and careers in elementary education.
"The ultimate vision is to get some young men into the pipeline so at the elementary level kids can see some people in a leadership role that look like them," said state Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, who is helping to lead the organization.
Hill said the foundation has been in development since 2005. He cited recent reports that ranked Duval County third from the bottom of large school districts nationwide in black male graduation rates in the 2007-08 school year as an additional motivator. The school district questioned the methodology of the study, which was conducted by the Cambridge, Mass.-based Schott Foundation for Public Education, and disputed the findings.
Of the approximately 119,000 elementary students who attend public schools on the First Coast, about 20 percent are black or Hispanic boys, but only 1 percent of the more than 7,600 elementary teachers in the region are black or Hispanic men. Across the state, black and Hispanic boys make up 26 percent of elementary students, while black and Hispanic males account for 3 percent of elementary teachers.
"Young black males just do not see other African-American males in leadership and authority positions that they can relate to," Hill said.
The organization's board members will spend the next year fundraising and getting the word out about its effort, Hill said. The board consists of physicians, business leaders and educators.
Breaking the cycle
Martha Valdes-Pellino, chief financial officer of the Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce of Northeast Florida, said the foundation is an opportunity to break a cycle with black and Hispanic boys.
"If we don't get our young men educated it turns into a vicious cycle of unemployment, getting into trouble and possible jail time," Valdes-Pellino said. "So education is really the answer to preventing these teens from falling to the wayside."
Hill said the group intends to set fundraising targets and scholarship goals in November and hopes to meet with the education deans of Florida's historically black colleges and universities to see if they can match the group's efforts.
The group is starting with historically black colleges because large numbers of black students attend the schools and many will go back to their communities to live and work, Hill said.
The pool of college-educated black and Hispanic men is already small and the challenge for Hill's group is to convince those talented students to skip careers as engineers and lawyers.
Mitchell, who is one of Duval's 70 black male elementary teachers, practiced law in Maryland for five years before he and his wife moved to Jacksonville. After the move he said he wanted to try something new.
"Once many of us go and get our degrees, we don't necessarily think about teaching, definitely not at the elementary level," Mitchell said. "Because of our socioeconomic status, when we go and get degrees we tend to want to better ourselves, better our family."
To sweeten the pot, Hill said the group would like to use the foundation funds to pay black and Hispanic male elementary teachers to mentor their students as well.
If the community is willing to pay probation officers to work with young people who've made mistakes, the community can pay teachers to mentor young people and keep them from making mistakes, Hill said.
Recruiting teachers
Duval and Clay counties are tackling the issue with recruitment efforts aimed at increasing the pool of minority applicants for teacher positions.
Duval will host a recruitment event targeting black males Saturday called "A Teacher Like Me" at Florida State College at Jacksonville's Downtown Campus. The event is targeting black males.
"It's important for students to have teachers who are reflective of them so they can have role models to look to," said Jimminda Thompson, a recruiting supervisor for Duval schools. "That is a key factor in students being able to see themselves in a teaching role, or being able to relate to their teacher."
Clay County public schools faced a civil rights complaint last school year from community members and clergy who felt the district wasn't making enough of an effort to recruit minority teachers.
There are about 1,480 elementary teachers in Clay County, of which four are black or Hispanic males.
The district responded to the complaint by forming a task force with the community to address hiring efforts, and in May, the district held its first-ever recruitment fair with nearly 500 applicants in attendance. More than a quarter of those were minorities.
This past year, 14 percent of the new teachers and 37 percent of the new administrators hired by the district were minorities, said Toni McCabe, Clay's assistant superintendent for human resources.
Michael Henry, principal of S. Bryan Jennings Elementary School and one of the district's few black principals, said the numbers were a dramatic improvement.
"We're moving in a direction toward working together to eradicate some of the disparities," he said.
Achieve Instill Inspire raised about $10,000 toward its cause during a kickoff event in September. Hill knows that is far from what is needed to fulfill their vision.
"A thousand miles begins with one step, for the first time in years we're not leaving it up to government," Hill said. "It's going to be a slow process, but we're in this thing for the long haul."
Shubert, Joshua's mother, said she is pulling for the new organization to raise a ton of money and send lots of black and Hispanic men to college so more boys can have Joshua's experience.
"When Joshua looks back," Shubert said, "he'll say, 'Yeah, Mr. Mitchell was mean, but I got my lesson.'"
Posted: October 5, 2010
By Topher Sanders
Joshua Shubert sometimes thinks his third-grade teacher, Wayne Mitchell, is mean. Octavia Shubert, Joshua's mother, disagrees.
"No, he's firm," Shubert says of Mitchell. "And that's what I like. Especially [for] a young black man with the way the world is today."
Mitchell, 45, in his fourth year teaching at George Washington Carver Elementary, is a rare commodity in education: a male elementary teacher. Even more rare, Mitchell is a black male elementary teacher.
"They actually need somebody to get them on track and do a little bit more than just educate," Mitchell said of his students, particularly the boys. "So I sometimes feel more like a father. You need to give them a lot of love."
The new Jacksonville-based nonprofit organization, Achieve Instill Inspire Foundation, is looking to make teachers like Mitchell less rare across the state. The foundation wants to provide scholarships to black and Latino men who will commit to pursuing degrees and careers in elementary education.
"The ultimate vision is to get some young men into the pipeline so at the elementary level kids can see some people in a leadership role that look like them," said state Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, who is helping to lead the organization.
Hill said the foundation has been in development since 2005. He cited recent reports that ranked Duval County third from the bottom of large school districts nationwide in black male graduation rates in the 2007-08 school year as an additional motivator. The school district questioned the methodology of the study, which was conducted by the Cambridge, Mass.-based Schott Foundation for Public Education, and disputed the findings.
Of the approximately 119,000 elementary students who attend public schools on the First Coast, about 20 percent are black or Hispanic boys, but only 1 percent of the more than 7,600 elementary teachers in the region are black or Hispanic men. Across the state, black and Hispanic boys make up 26 percent of elementary students, while black and Hispanic males account for 3 percent of elementary teachers.
"Young black males just do not see other African-American males in leadership and authority positions that they can relate to," Hill said.
The organization's board members will spend the next year fundraising and getting the word out about its effort, Hill said. The board consists of physicians, business leaders and educators.
Breaking the cycle
Martha Valdes-Pellino, chief financial officer of the Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce of Northeast Florida, said the foundation is an opportunity to break a cycle with black and Hispanic boys.
"If we don't get our young men educated it turns into a vicious cycle of unemployment, getting into trouble and possible jail time," Valdes-Pellino said. "So education is really the answer to preventing these teens from falling to the wayside."
Hill said the group intends to set fundraising targets and scholarship goals in November and hopes to meet with the education deans of Florida's historically black colleges and universities to see if they can match the group's efforts.
The group is starting with historically black colleges because large numbers of black students attend the schools and many will go back to their communities to live and work, Hill said.
The pool of college-educated black and Hispanic men is already small and the challenge for Hill's group is to convince those talented students to skip careers as engineers and lawyers.
Mitchell, who is one of Duval's 70 black male elementary teachers, practiced law in Maryland for five years before he and his wife moved to Jacksonville. After the move he said he wanted to try something new.
"Once many of us go and get our degrees, we don't necessarily think about teaching, definitely not at the elementary level," Mitchell said. "Because of our socioeconomic status, when we go and get degrees we tend to want to better ourselves, better our family."
To sweeten the pot, Hill said the group would like to use the foundation funds to pay black and Hispanic male elementary teachers to mentor their students as well.
If the community is willing to pay probation officers to work with young people who've made mistakes, the community can pay teachers to mentor young people and keep them from making mistakes, Hill said.
Recruiting teachers
Duval and Clay counties are tackling the issue with recruitment efforts aimed at increasing the pool of minority applicants for teacher positions.
Duval will host a recruitment event targeting black males Saturday called "A Teacher Like Me" at Florida State College at Jacksonville's Downtown Campus. The event is targeting black males.
"It's important for students to have teachers who are reflective of them so they can have role models to look to," said Jimminda Thompson, a recruiting supervisor for Duval schools. "That is a key factor in students being able to see themselves in a teaching role, or being able to relate to their teacher."
Clay County public schools faced a civil rights complaint last school year from community members and clergy who felt the district wasn't making enough of an effort to recruit minority teachers.
There are about 1,480 elementary teachers in Clay County, of which four are black or Hispanic males.
The district responded to the complaint by forming a task force with the community to address hiring efforts, and in May, the district held its first-ever recruitment fair with nearly 500 applicants in attendance. More than a quarter of those were minorities.
This past year, 14 percent of the new teachers and 37 percent of the new administrators hired by the district were minorities, said Toni McCabe, Clay's assistant superintendent for human resources.
Michael Henry, principal of S. Bryan Jennings Elementary School and one of the district's few black principals, said the numbers were a dramatic improvement.
"We're moving in a direction toward working together to eradicate some of the disparities," he said.
Achieve Instill Inspire raised about $10,000 toward its cause during a kickoff event in September. Hill knows that is far from what is needed to fulfill their vision.
"A thousand miles begins with one step, for the first time in years we're not leaving it up to government," Hill said. "It's going to be a slow process, but we're in this thing for the long haul."
Shubert, Joshua's mother, said she is pulling for the new organization to raise a ton of money and send lots of black and Hispanic men to college so more boys can have Joshua's experience.
"When Joshua looks back," Shubert said, "he'll say, 'Yeah, Mr. Mitchell was mean, but I got my lesson.'"
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