Jeb Bush on FCAT, Common Core, bipartisanship. He tells StateImpact Florida, “Education is one of the few places where you have left-right coalitions that are for reform and left-right coalitions that are against reform. It’s not as monolithic as other areas of policy.”

Orange school board considers more school choice. It’s considering a policy that would allow students at over-capacity schools to enroll at under-capacity schools, reports the Orlando Sentinel.

More on charter school funding. Orlando Sentinel.

Charter school teacher raises. Represented by the Broward Teachers Union, the charter school teachers in the Pembroke Pines system win a raise through arbitration, reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Proposed cut scores. For biology and geometry end of course exams and FCAT science. From Gradebook. From Sentinel.

FEA talks teacher evaluations today. From the News Service of Florida: Members of the Florida Education Association discuss impacts of the new teacher evaluation system that was created as a result of SB 736 setting up merit pay. FEA President Andy Ford and teachers participate.

School choice will have its own legislative committee. From the News Service of Florida (subscription required): “Incoming House Speaker Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, is revamping the House's committee structure, including making changes that will affect education and regulatory issues. The changes, outlined in a memo sent to House members Wednesday, include creating an education Choice & Innovation Subcommittee, which will deal with a wide range of issues such as charter schools, virtual instruction and voucher-type programs.”

A plea on teacher evals. The Florida Education Association asks Gov. Rick Scott to use his authority to postpone the linking of standardized test scores to teacher evaluations, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

More school funding votes. Voters in Seminole said yes to a tax hike, voters in Volusia said no, the Orlando Sentinel reports. Brevard voters also said no, Florida Today reports.

Charter school closing. The Lee County School Board prepares to close a charter school with financial problems, the Fort Myers News Press reports.

About that $155 million verdict for the former charter principal. Nevermind, the Miami Herald reports.

Mounting criticism over student deaths. Hillsborough County parents start facebook pages and have scheduled a protest in response to the deaths of two special needs students, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

From Idaho and Indiana, a message for Jeb Bush? StateImpact Florida.

To allegedly help parents understand Amendment 8, one of Florida's biggest school districts has distributed 69,000 fliers, punctuated by scary claims, in all of its school lobbies and reception areas. "VOTE ON NOVEMBER 6," they say. "Amendment 8 could impact your public school."

The Orange County school district tells redefinED the fliers don't cross the line into advocacy because they're for informational purposes and state, at the top, "IT'S YOUR DECISION." But the fliers are filled with the same misinformation being spread far and wide by the Florida Education Association, Florida School Boards Association and Fund Education Now - and left unchallenged by Florida journalists.

"If Amendment 8 passes, potentially billions of state dollars could be diverted from public schools," the flier says. "If Amendment 8 passes, public funds could be redirected into private hands by funding the education of hundreds of thousands of students in private and religious schools."

Not true. We've detailed why here and here. Amendment 8 would remove the no-aid to religion language in the Florida Constitution, which is a proposition that deserves debate. But to suggest it opens the door to private school vouchers is more than a stretch; it's wrong. Like the same claims made at school board meetings and in press releases, the ones on the district fliers don't offer any supporting evidence - and, as far as we can tell, no reporters have asked for any. In Florida, truth continues to go off the rails.

It's concerning enough that Florida education reporters are overlooking basic facts about Amendment 8 - the "religious freedom amendment" - and in many cases simply repeating what the teachers unions and school boards say about it (that it's really about vouchers voucher vouchers vouchers ... ). But an Orlando Sentinel reporter took it a step further yesterday, incorporating opposition talking points into a story as if they were true.

This is what the post on the Sentinel's SchoolZone blog said: "The Orange County School Board added their name to the roster of school boards officially opposing Amendment 8, which could lead to the revival of public vouchers to religious and private schools."

As we've respectfully noted, there are debate-worthy reasons why people supporting Amendment 8 want to remove the "no aid" provision in the Florida Constitution. But because of the legal history here, private school choice isn't seriously one of them.

The Sentinel post also mentioned a "recent analysis" by the relatively obscure Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy, which was the topic of a separate blog post earlier in the day (and which followed a full story in the Sentinel that morning that, like so many others in recent weeks, did not ask "the other side" if vouchers were really an issue and offered no evidence that it was.) The analysis claims Amendment 8 "would have a huge negative impact on public education" and "would open the way for universal private school vouchers in Florida."

The center - which once issued a report suggesting Education Week's Quality Counts report wasn't about education quality - has direct ties to the Florida Education Association and Florida School Boards Association, but those ties weren't noted in either blog post.

Its claims are way off the mark, but don't take our word for it. Please, take a closer look.

The battle over an amendment to Florida’s no-aid-to-religion clause has taken another intriguing turn. In campaign contribution reports released today, the money war pits the Florida Education Association against Catholic groups. FEA is winning 6-to-1.

Through the Public Education Defense Fund, the FEA contributed $1 million through Sept. 14 to defeat the amendment, according to the reports. On the flip side, a long list of Catholic groups has contributed the bulk of the $158,500 raised through the same time frame to support the effort. The pro-Amendment 8 group, Citizens for Religious Freedom & Non-Discrimination, has spent about $43,221. Vote No on 8, meanwhile, has spent $759,003, mostly on media buys.

The amendment removes a clause in the State Constitution that has historical origins in anti-Catholic church bias, which hits home with church members to this day. A New York-based group, the Council for Secular Humanism, has sued to stop a prison ministries program to help inmates get off drugs, and religious providers fear the suit could lead to challenges involving other faith-based community services, such as Catholic Charities and the YMCA.

Meanwhile, FEA is waging its own campaign – against school vouchers – even though this amendment does not change the one constitutional provision that was cited by the Florida Supreme Court when in 2006 it outlawed a voucher that was the signature effort of former Gov. Jeb Bush. Voucher advocates are no longer interested in the no-aid amendment because they think two U.S. Supreme Court opinions provide ample protection.

So this showdown is looking stranger by the minute. One side fights against vouchers, the other for soup kitchens.

(Image from political-reform.net)

While the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission will no doubt continue to reshape the campaign finance landscape, a Wall Street Journal report today is a reminder that teacher unions remain very active players. Using information from both U.S. Labor Department and Federal Election Commission reports, the Journal identified $377 million in total political spending by the nation's two top teacher organizations from 2005 to 2011. That's roughly four times the amount previously reported just from FEC records.

Of note to those of us in Florida, the Journal also reported that the Florida Education Association spent $14.7 million over the same period, ranking it behind only teachers unions in California, New York and four other northern states.

The Florida number brings to mind a Florida Times-Union story published last year on the campaign influence of a separate education organization, the American Federation For Children. That story, which is still actively linked by various progressive blogs, made the legitimate point that AFC, a national organization that supports private school options, has been spending money for candidates who feel the same way. The reporter identified $313,757 in Florida campaign contributions since 2007, and singled out Democrats who, as it turns out, had received roughly three-fourths of that total.

What the story and the blog posts have missed is that the AFC money pales in comparison to what FEA spends to influence the process. This is not intended as a criticism of FEA or its investment in the political process, because its members indeed have a profound interest in education policy. But the story carried with it the implication that the Democrats who support private learning options for low-income students are selling out for campaign money. It said as much through how it reported the response of the Democrats: "They say their vote is about bringing choice to districts with poor public schools, not campaign cash." Pointedly, it did not ask the same question of Democrats who oppose private learning options and receive FEA contributions. That question is more than little relevant, given that unions still forcefully oppose any voucher for any child for any reason.

A South Florida progressive blog recently branded any Democrat who votes to give poor children a private learning option a "sellout to the school voucher lobby." Given the striking difference in the financial stakes between the voucher lobby and the FEA lobby, this accusation assumes such a Democrat not only lacks the moral conviction to help poor school children but the political acumen to sell out to the highest bidder.

No matter how many times critics of parental choice say it, it’s still not true: Tax credit scholarships in Florida (aka vouchers) do not drain money from public schools.

The latest example: An op-ed in Sunday’s Ocala Star Banner by Andy Ford, president of the state teachers union. Ford (pictured below) focuses on the state of education funding in Florida, and much of what he argues is undeniable. These are tough times for schools. The money that Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature scraped together for education this year is still billions short of where the state was five years ago. I have one child in public school. In a few months, I’ll have two. I sympathize.

But then Ford redirects his financial argument toward tax-credit scholarships, suggesting they’re part of the reason why public schools are in dire straits. “There’s also money in the budget for expanding charter schools and increasing money for corporate voucher schools,” he writes. “Here’s another example of political leaders favoring unproven and less-accountable schools over our traditional neighborhood schools.”

He concludes: “At a time when the governor and lawmakers doled out more tax giveaways for corporations, more money for unaccountable voucher schools and more support and freedom for for-profit charter schools, our public schools are given a budget far from adequate and far from a true investment in our children.”

We'll save the issue of accountability for another day, because it’s the pervasive myth of financial loss that resonates most with parents and voters. Despite what Ford says, one credible, independent report after another has found tax credit scholarships save taxpayer money. The Collins Center for Public Policy came to that conclusion, as did Florida Tax Watch, the Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability and, just last month, an impact report from Florida’s Revenue Estimating Conference. The latter found the tax credit program will save taxpayers $57.9 million next year alone. (more…)

I started teaching in the fall of 1977, and by the winter of 1978 I had become a union organizer. A law authorizing public employees to participate in collective bargaining had passed a few years earlier in the Florida legislature, and public educators were actively organizing themselves into unions.

Management was hostile toward our efforts. They asserted that unions would pit teacher against teacher, and teachers against management. They said collaboration was the key to improving our working conditions - not the adversarial relationships that are inherent in unions. They set up teacher advisory councils and said we didn’t need unions. They said we had input through the councils.

Management always uses these arguments to fight union organizers, which is why I wasn’t surprised they surfaced during the recent parent trigger debate in Florida. The parent trigger legislation is part of an effort by progressive Democrats to begin unionizing parents in school districts, and management is opposing their efforts. But it’s ironic that teachers unions are also opposing parent unions and using the same arguments management used against them in the 1970s. (more…)