The Nuts have Taken Over Florida Schools

[TeyshaBlue]

What's that?? segregated?

No, stratified.

[baseline bum]

Basing teacher pay on standardized testing is horrible. I remember how much time we wasted on the ing worthless TAAS test, being constantly drilled with elementary crap and taking practice TAAS tests over and over. What a joke. Instead of learning new material, we'd have weeks all we did in some classes was study for this crap. Standardized testing as an evaluation of teachers and schools is just a lazy answer pushed by bureaucrats so they can say they did something without having to think too hard.

[Wild Cobra]

Basing teacher pay on standardized testing is horrible. I remember how much time we wasted on the ing worthless TAAS test, being constantly drilled with elementary crap and taking practice TAAS tests over and over. What a joke. Instead of learning new material, we'd have weeks all we did in some classes was study for this crap. Standardized testing as an evaluation of teachers and schools is just a lazy answer pushed by bureaucrats so they can say they did something without having to think too hard.

I agree that is the wrong way to measure a teacher's worth, but something has to be done to get rid of bad teachers.

[TeyshaBlue]

Basing teacher pay on standardized testing is horrible. I remember how much time we wasted on the ing worthless TAAS test, being constantly drilled with elementary crap and taking practice TAAS tests over and over. What a joke. Instead of learning new material, we'd have weeks all we did in some classes was study for this crap. Standardized testing as an evaluation of teachers and schools is just a lazy answer pushed by bureaucrats so they can say they did something without having to think too hard.

Exactly. It's as if we only consider outputs and ignore the inputs. One of the odd champions of input reform was Ross Perot. Remember HB 72 back in the early 80's? I was teaching at a 5A High School when that passed. No pass no play? Absurd! Essential Elements for lesson plans? Outrageous!

It was awesome.

[Stringer_Bell]

Standardized tests are , especially when schools take away time from other subjects to "teach to the test." Classes can lose 20 minutes teaching a subject unrelated and good teachers aren't down with that. Our young people are getting dumber and dumber while the world is getting smarter...I still think the first teacher is the parent, and if the parent is involved the kid will be fine. But how do we get through to the parents?

Let's just privatize schools, more free market solutions!

[coyotes_geek]

I understand all the arguements against standardized tests and for the most part agree with those arguements. But still, at the end of the day we do need some kind of metric for measuring how good a job our schools and our teachers are doing. If not standardized tests, what?

[z0sa]

Much to the chagrin of all politically correct morons in this world (and there are far too many), not all people are created equal. They are in the eyes of government and law, but not in intelligence, app ude and potential.

All too well said. Everyone is taught from Day 1 they have all the potential in the world, and it's simply not true. You have more potential at some things compared with others, and less at different things compared with others.

Everyone believes they are en led to be equal in natural talent or skill nowadays, for no reason. Most people don't expect their kids to be an NBA superstar because they can clearly see they don't have the natural ability. Yet for some reason, anyone can be a mathematician or rocket scientist from birth.

Just like bodies, brains don't possess natural talent, develop or learn at an equal rate. Until we move past being PC on this issue (perhaps never), the system will stay broken.

[z0sa]

If not standardized tests, what?

This is really the biggest dilemma. Slower kid with a ty home life fails, but the teacher honestly put forth the effort. Who gets the blame?

[rjv]

nothing good has ever come out of florida.

emmitt smith ?

[Blake]

In a private school, underperforming teachers get canned. In a public school, they get annual raises and protection.

I don't think it's as general as that.

Private school salaries are roughly 10-15k lower than public school salaries. It's hard enough to find teachers for private schools, let alone keep them.

[Blake]

I understand all the arguements against standardized tests and for the most part agree with those arguements. But still, at the end of the day we do need some kind of metric for measuring how good a job our schools and our teachers are doing. If not standardized tests, what?

It would be nice if the standardized tests they give were measured against tests from other countries....

[Oh, Gee!!]

how about preparing the kids for college instead of a multiple choice test?

[MiamiHeat]

[MiamiHeat]

so when will everyone stop and realize we have to actually parent our ing kids?

instead of sending them off to public school everyday and "let them deal with it" while you go off to work, then come home and not really parent your kids?

feed them, they watch TV or go on twitter, rinse and repeat.


This is all a part of the ty, degenerate culture that has spiraled ever since the

1) feminazi's and the denial of women wanting to be stay at home mothers

2) got hippies of the 1960's.

[Nbadan]

I agree that is the wrong way to measure a teacher's worth, but something has to be done to get rid of bad teachers.

I'm not against some type of promotion test in every grade, but right now the objectives for every grade are too broad, this takes away from giving kids enough time to discover a deeper understanding of basic concepts - especially in math and science...

[Nbadan]

more rape the people, and take the money from the GOP...

She was a 25-year-old junior staffer when the Florida Republican Party gave her an American Express card.

Over the next 2½ years, nearly $1.3 million in charges wound up on Melanie Phister's AmEx — $40,000 at a London hotel, and nearly $20,000 in plane tickets for indicted former House Speaker Ray Sansom, his wife and kids, for starters. Statements show thousands spent on jewelry, sporting goods and in one case $15,000 for what's listed as a month-long stay at a posh Miami Beach hotel, but which the party says was a forfeited deposit.

The credit card records, obtained by the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald, offer the latest behind-the-scenes look at extravagant and free-wheeling spending by the party touting fiscal restraint. Not only did certain elite legislative leaders have their own party credit cards to spend donors' money with little oversight, but Phister's records show these leaders also liberally used an underling's card — without her knowledge, she says.

"I did not have the sole discretion to initiate credit card spending," Phister said in an e-mail statement. "Over that period of time, there were multiple instances when the card was used to make purchases that I had no knowledge of, and I did not regularly review the monthly credit card statements which I understand were sent directly to the Party's accounting office."

Even after a series of embarrassing revelations over profligate credit card spending by the likes of Republican U.S. Senate frontrunner Marco Rubio, Sansom and incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon — and pending state and federal investigations of party finances — revelations of the huge charges on Phister's card had veteran GOP fundraisers apoplectic.

Tampa Bay

The party of fiscal restraint..what a joke....fiscal restraint everyone else while they steal you blind...