Jeb summit coverage. Education Week: Jeb Bush urges reformers to stay the course. More from ABC News/Univision, Washington Times, National Journal, Herald-Tribune. Bush’s remarks on C-SPAN here. For the most complete summit coverage, check back at redefinED and/or follow us @redefinedonline.

Teacher evaluations. Under the new system, the vast majority of teachers in the Duval and St. Johns school districts are rated effective or highly effective (just like under the old system), reports the Florida Times-Union.

Florida Race to the Top finalists. Five districts in the mix, reports Gradebook.

More on Florida grad rates. StateImpact Florida. Orlando Sentinel School Zone blog.

Florida mirage? As the Foundation for Excellence in Education summit gets underway today, Reuters takes a look at Florida’s academic progress in the Jeb Bush era and writes “a close examination raises questions about the depth and durability of the gains.”

Grad rates. Florida’s aren’t good, according to a new U.S. DOE report, reports Gradebook.

$10,000 bachelor’s degrees. Gov. Rick Scott challenges state colleges to come up with innovative ways to bring down costs, reports the Tampa Bay Times. The Times editorial board calls it a “publicity stunt.” Board of Education member Roberto Martinez is also not impressed. More from the Orlando Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Florida Times-Union, Miami Herald, Tampa Tribune.

Proposed school closings in Brevard and the connection to new charter schools. Florida Today columnist Matt Reed.

From the better-late-than-never file:

The percentage of Florida students eligible for free- and reduced-price lunch rose for the fifth straight year last year to 57.6 percent, according to the state Department of Education.

In total, 1.54 million of the state’s 2.69 million students were eligible, marking the third straight year a majority of Florida students reached that threshold, says a report posted on the DOE web site over the summer (I stumbled on the latest numbers over the weekend, and as far as I can tell, no traditional news outlets have reported them).

The report shows 78.7 percent of black students were eligible for free- and reduced-price lunch last year, compared to 71.5 percent of Hispanic students and 38.2 percent of white students.

Among the state’s biggest districts, Miami-Dade led with the highest percentage, at 71.9 percent, followed by Polk at 68.3 percent and Lee at 64.2 percent.

Since the 2003-04 school year, Florida schools have also been majority minority. Last year, 57 percent of Florida students were minorities.

Despite the challenging demographics, Florida has over the past 10 to 15 years been among the leading states on key academic indicators, including progress on NAEP, performance on Advanced Placement tests and improvement in graduation rates.

Florida’s public schools were handed another solid but overlooked report card this week from another respected, independent source.

The 27-page, data-stuffed, “Decade of Progress” progress report from the Southern Regional Education Board is yet more evidence that Florida’s public schools are making steady progress despite the claims of some critics. The trend lines are often especially strong for low-income and minority students.

For example, between 2003 and 2011, the percentage of low-income eighth-graders scoring at the basic level or above on the reading portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress rose from 55 to 65 percent in Florida – a 10-point gain. Over the same period, the percentage of more affluent eighth-graders who reached the bar rose 5 percentage points, from 78 to 83 percent.

For each of its 16 member states, the SREB looked at a wide array of academic indicators to see how much the needle moved over the past decade, and how those gains or losses compared nationally and regionally. Besides commonly cited indicators like NAEP scores, graduation rates and AP results, the board looked at less-publicized statistics like college enrollment rates, ninth-grade “enrollment bulges” and grade-level progression in high school.

According to the report, the percentage of recent high school graduates enrolling in college in Florida increased from 57 to 71 percent between 2000 and 2010. Nationally, the numbers rose from 56 to 67 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage of college freshmen in Florida who returned for a second year remained steady at 86 percent.

The SREB report comes as Florida faces mounting criticism for its testing and accountability regimen, which many critics, including local school board members and parent groups, say has been ineffective. Despite that backdrop, the report was all but ignored by Florida media (an exception here), as was this recent report that found Florida’s graduation rates are among the fastest-rising in the nation.

Media coverage of education reform in Florida never ceases to amaze. What you should be hearing today are the sputtering responses of critics who have drawn widespread media attention in recent weeks with reckless claims that Florida’s ed reforms are an “unmitigated disaster.” Instead ...

The easy prompt for fair and obvious questions was yesterday’s release of the annual “Diplomas Count” report from Education Week. The independent analysis found that between 1999 and 2009, Florida’s graduation rate climbed 18 percentage points – more than all but two states. It also found that Florida’s black and Hispanic students are graduating at rates higher than the national average for like students, which is of no small import for a majority-minority state like Florida. The 2009 rate for Florida’s Hispanic students, in fact, put them at No. 2 among Hispanic students in all 50 states.

So how did the Florida media cover this compelling news? For the most part, it didn’t. (more…)

Florida public schools got another clear sign of progress today from a highly regarded, independent source.

Between 1999 and 2009, Florida’s graduation rate climbed from 52.5 percent to 70.4 percent, a 17.9 percentage point gain that puts the Sunshine State third among all 50 states in rate of progress, according to the latest "Diplomas Count" report released by Education Week.

Florida ranked No. 37 among states in 2009, up from No. 47 a decade prior.

The report also shows black and Hispanic students in Florida are graduating at higher rates than like students in other states. The rate for Hispanic students in Florida reached 72.6 percent in 2009, 9.6 percentage points higher than the national average. Black students in Florida came in at 62.0 percent, 3.3 percentage points higher than the average.

The latest numbers are more validation for education reformers in Florida, who have pushed the envelope on standards, accountability and expanded school choice since former Gov. Jeb Bush was elected in 1998. For them, the report’s timing couldn’t have been better. (more…)

As you know, we keep tabs on what’s written and said about school choice and ed reform, particularly in Florida. This week has been a doozy when it comes to head-scratching statements. Today we highlight a few and offer a quick response …

In just a few years, Orlando-based Fund Education Now has become the leading parent group in Florida. Aggressive. Media savvy. Super effective. I respect its members for their passion. I sometimes agree with them. But there are times when the rhetoric is at odds with reality.

After this week’s FCAT fiasco, the group wrote in an action alert to members: “These abysmal FCAT Writes scores are proof that Tallahassee’s ‘education reforms’ are an unmitigated disaster.” I agree the state raised the bar too fast and too fast on some of our standardized tests. But have the state’s policies as a whole flat-out bombed?

In the past four years, Florida has ranked No. 11, No. 8, No. 5 and No. 11 among all 50 states in Education Week’s annual Quality Counts report. And contrary to some critics’ claims, that’s not just because of policies on paper that sound good; it’s also because the state has moved the needle on student achievement, particularly for low-income kids. On the K-12 achievement portion of EdWeek’s rating – which considers performance and progress on NAEP, AP and graduation rates – Florida finished at No. 7, No. 7, No. 6 and No. 12 over the past four years. In 2011, it finished in the Top 10 in eight of nine progress categories. It finished in the Top 3 in six of them.

The reason Florida tumbled out of the overall top 10 this year is because of budget cuts, and because its NAEP scores have stalled in reading and math. That’s troubling when the state is still nowhere near where it needs to be. I think that’s what led the state Board of Education to be too bold in raising the bar.

But Florida’s policy makers, like them or not, have been more right than wrong in the past decade when it comes to standards and accountability and school choice. To deny there’s been progress is good for stoking fury and mobilizing troops. But it’s unfair to the teachers who made it happen. And it could undermine changes that really did make things better for kids.

In an op-ed Sunday, syndicated columnist Bill Maxwell describes what he sees as another round of teacher bashing in Florida and blames “conservative lawmakers who dominate Tallahassee” and are gunning to privatize public schools. The prompt for his outrage: A cost-cutting decision by the Pinellas County School District to curb the use of individual printers by teachers. (more…)

The last thing you want to give people waging a scorched-earth campaign against you is a gas can and a match.

Though well intended, the hard-charging Florida Board of Education moved too far, too fast last year when it raised the bar on academic standards. The short-term result for the state’s standardized writing test isn’t pretty. According to scores released this week, the percentage of passing fourth graders alone dropped from 81 to 27.

In an emergency session, the board tried to mitigate. It revised the passing scores downward so the percent passing will be roughly the same this year as it was last year. Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson also admitted the state should have better communicated the new scoring criteria to teachers.

But (sigh) the damage was done. The people who have bitterly fought every major education reform in Florida since Jeb Bush was elected governor – and who will never admit there has been real progress - now have a bit of real ammo. They’ll use it to take fresh aim at everything from new teacher evaluations to expanded school choice. They’ll be even more aggressive ripping into the next batch of reading and math scores, which will also look a lot starker this year.

Conspiracy theories are spinning wildly. This was a well orchestrated plot, goes one, to make traditional public schools look bad so charter schools shine by comparison and the privatization agenda can reign supreme. Never mind that just a few years ago, the state had a record number of A and B schools. Or that charter schools take the same tests. Or that, if the past is any guide, a disproportionate number of them will be tagged with F’s.

You won’t read this in the papers (except, thankfully, in this Orlando Sentinel column), so here’s the backdrop for Florida’s latest ed reform flap. (more…)