Tom Marshall of the St. Petersburg Times wrote this morning that Gov.-elect Rick Scott’s new education transition team in Florida “hints at the ferment under way in public education, as change-minded lawmakers in Tallahassee and Washington consider new ways to boost student performance, improve teacher evaluation and offer new options for families.” He’s right.
Consider me biased, of course, because I am privileged to serve as one of the 18 members. But any education team that includes former D.C. chancellor Michelle Rhee and current Tampa/Hillsborough superintendent MaryEllen Elia is certain to operate from the vantage point that matters most: What do children and their parents need?
Tom’s story is a reminder that the traditional lines are forever blurred in public education. He even notes the partnership between our Tax Credit Scholarship program for 33,000 low-income children and the school district and teachers union for Tampa/Hillsborough, which is the nation’s eighth largest district. We got together to provide better professional education for teachers in both public and private scholarship schools, and the union president, Jean Clements, was graceful in her explanation to reporters: ““This is not a competition. It’s about all of us doing our best to help children who come from very difficult circumstances.” (more…)
Two former governors from two different political parties this week announced the 10 elements of a digital-learning initiative they hoped would set educators on an entrepreneurial path to disruptive innovations in public education. If it wasn’t clear to the more than 500 people in attendance at the Washington, D.C., conference, where the elements were unveiled, this was a bipartisan drive to further scramble the current conept of “public schools” and “private schools."
What former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise identified at the National Summit on Education Reform were the principles of transformational productivity in education demanded by President Obama’s White House education team. When Bush says that we have to think of public education “as educating the public” and calls for policies that allow students to customize their education, he’s applying the same concept that U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan does when Duncan tells schools to do more to “personalize” education.
The Digital Learning Now! initiative meets all these goals, and makes no distinction between public and private schooling. Indeed, its provisions demand that states recognize all learning providers – public, private and charter – equally. And for traditional school districts to adopt the digital innovations at the core of education reform, they will have to recognize private providers – with all their human and financial capital – as partners. (more…)
Derrell Bradford, executive director of the New Jersey-based Excellent Education for Everyone (E3) and possibly the hippest education reformer in America, told a National Summit audience Tuesday that there are only two ways to get your child in a school: You choose one, or your ZIP code chooses one for you. That formulation is the basis for radical change in this nation’s education landscape, and, on that measure, Florida is more than just host to this educational gathering. Its parents are choosing their child’s school at a rate that makes you stand up and take notice.
Roughly one of every three public schoolchildren in Florida now attend a school other than the one tied to their ZIP code. Take a look at the 2009-10 enrollment numbers associated with a dozen different options and remember that most of them didn't even exist a generation ago. (more…)
