Will Florida Head Of Schools Resign over Charter Cheating in Indiana?

 Update:  And so he did resign, saying an old ed reform canard,  Florida "doesn't have time to waste." He also said (and again, another old tactic):  “The most important thing we have to do is educate children,” Bennett said. “Maybe what we ought to do is debate how the best way to do that is without being personal and assigning motives to it.”

From Indiana Public Media:

Bennett’s successor will be the sixth person to fill the position as Education Commissioner under Florida Governor Rick Scott. Pam Stewart, current Florida DOE Chancellor, has been names as a possible choice for interim commissioner in Bennett’s absence.

End of update

Frederick M. Hess, a more moderate righty who writes for Ed Week, thinks so.  As he puts it for poor Florida:

If Florida Supe Bennett resigns today, will be tough to recruit strong replacement.  Three chiefs in three years?  Yikes.  It's like drumming for Spinal Tap.

He also tweeted:
If Fl Supe Bennett resigns today, it's bad news for Common Core.  Prediction: FL withdraws from PARCC and next cheif is lukewarm on CC.

(PARCC is the partnership for assessment of readiness for college, part of CC. Georgia has already dropped out as has Oklahoma, Penn, North Dakota and Alabama.  The average cost per student for this assessment is penciling out to about $29 a student.)

I won't trouble you with Bennett's very cagey and funny explanation for his e-mails on the subject and the outcome of the changes in scoring.  No one is buying it and boy, is he damaged goods.  But, like many an ed reformer, they rise from the dead (kind of like Michelle Rhee).

The weight of all of this - TFA, Common Core, charter schools - is starting to weigh down this Titanic of ed reform.  Just as many of us knew it would.

Trouble is, will it come fast enough to save the dollars and time that all this imaginary "help" to public education and get teachers back to, well, teaching?

Comments

mirmac1 said…
What a waste of money...
mirmac1 said…
Gee, do you think the Times will cover this story. I'm sure they looooved the whole school grading push in Olympia last session.
dan dempsey said…
Let us look at Jay Greene's blog today =>

http://jaypgreene.com/2013/08/01/choice-first-standards-second/

"The Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times are now reporting that Tony Bennett is expected to resign.

As I’ve said all along, this is not about Tony Bennett. This is about whether educational standards should be formulated by politicians and their allies behind closed doors and then presented as the One Best Way to which all schools ought to conform."


..."Creating standards and accountability measures requires judgment. Judgment requires trust. What trust requires is a huge metaphysical subject we don’t have space to get into today, but let’s cut to the chase – people don’t trust the government to do this job by itself, behind closed doors and with no alternatives permitted, and they are right not to do so.

That is not because one particular person or one particular party is corrupt. It is written into nature of things, it is woven into the very fabric of the universe, that human social systems don’t work that way. "


==========================
dan dempsey said…
Melissa wrote:
Trouble is, will it come fast enough to save the dollars and time that all this imaginary "help" to public education and get teachers back to, well, teaching?

Amen to that.

Look at many of the points pushed by Liv Finne at WPC... does anyone actually think that most of what is pushed will make any positive difference in the classroom?

Really will nuances to scheme for the A-F grading of schools have any impact on classroom instruction?
dan dempsey said…
mirmac1 -- great link on Bennett's resignation.

It really demonstrates what the press can actually do ... as in finding the truth and exposing it.

No chance that will ever happen in Seattle with the Times masquerading as a real newspaper.
dan dempsey said…
When Arne Duncan resigns that will make my day.

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