Tony Bennett. On his first day on the job, he meets with superintendents and the Florida Association of District Administrators and says he is an “unapologetic advocate for school choice,” reports the Tallahassee Democrat. More from The Buzz. His first comments on the “Commissioner’s Blog” here. Interview with StateImpact Florida.

Charter school funding. More than 1,000 people turn out for a meeting called by Pembroke Pines charter parents to demand equal funding for charter schools, reports the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

School spending. If the Broward school district wants to get the money to repair old schools, it will have to restore trust with voters and overcome a “long and lousy history of stunningly bad behavior,” editorializes the Miami Herald: “The district has been plagued by cronyism, mismanagement and a culture of dishonesty. In a scathing grand jury report released almost two years ago, jurors said they found the district so thoroughly corrupt, so reckless in its spending of taxpayers’ money, they would have recommended abolishing the school board completely if the state Constitution didn’t require its existence.” In Manatee, a forensic audit finds “incompetency -- not criminal or illegal activity -- caused a $3.4 million budget deficit that rocked the public trust,” reports the Bradenton Herald. More from the Sarasota Herald Tribune.

School prayer law. “For the Satanists, it was a godsend,” writes Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerabino.

Cold water on the party. Former state Sen. Dan Gelber says there isn’t much for Florida to celebrate in the latest Education Week rankings. Florida Voices.

Murmurs. School administrators wanted to hear more from Gov. Rick Scott, writes Tampa Bay Times columnist Steve Bousquet.

Merit pay challenge. A hearing on the FEA’s challenge of SB 736 is set for Wednesday in Leon County Court. SchoolZone. (more…)

At the EdFly Blog today, former Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas asks a reasonable question: Why isn't the Florida teachers union trumpeting the dramatic gains of Florida teachers? This morning's Education Week ranking is just the latest in a long string of credible reports that finds Florida making steady academic progress. Shouldn't Florida teachers, doing more with less and under enormous pressure to produce results, get credit from those who portray themselves as their biggest supporters? Here's Thomas:

Florida scored another impressive victory with the state finishing sixth in the Education Week “Quality Counts’’ rankings.

This follows news from last month that Florida fourth graders finished second in the world on international reading assessments. In October, Miami-Dade won the prestigious Broad Prize for urban school districts because of progress in closing the achievement gap. Florida kids ranked second in the nation in learning gains dating back to the 1990s. I could go on.

Alas, Florida’s good news is not celebrated by all, even by its own teachers’ union. The Florida Education Association has been silent on all of the above, even though its teachers are on the front lines of these successes. Repentant reformer Diane Ravitch actually compared student achievement in Florida and Massachusetts. Of course Massachusetts kids perform better. Look at the student demographic and income data, Diane. Are you serious?

The reason for this denial is that Florida did not achieve its success by acceptable means. By that, I mean if the state had achieved these results by tripling education spending and eliminating its accountability provisions and school choice options, the above victories would have been trumpeted from the rooftops by the FEA and Diane as well.

Continue reading Thomas' post here.

Not the best fit. Andy Ford, president of the Florida teachers union, says in this Q&A with the Orlando Sentinel that Tony Bennett is “the best fit for the Jeb Bush power structure, but not the best choice for Florida's students, parents and school employees.” Board of Education member Kathleen Shanahan cites the PIRLS results in responding to a critical editorial about Bennett in the Tampa Bay Times.

Conflicts of interest? Three Board of Education members contributed to Tony Bennett’s campaign in Indiana. Gradebook.

Rick Scott is right to require students with vouchers and tax credit scholarships to take the same standardized tests as their public school peers, writes Adam Emerson at Choice Words.

In the wake of Newtown. Security beefed up at Florida schools: Tampa Bay Times, South Florida Sun Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Lakeland Ledger. Beneath the surface, emotional scars, reports the Miami Herald. State Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, and the author of the "stand your ground" law, says schools would be safer if teachers and principals could bring guns, reports the Sarasota Herald Tribune. More from Orlando Sentinel, Fort Myers News Press, Naples Daily News, Florida Today.

Remediation series. StateImpact Florida.

ALEC to remain neutral on Common Core. Report from EdWeek. As we noted last week, Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education weighed in against the ALEC resolution. Thumbs up from Checker Finn. More from EdFly Blog.

Speaking of Common Core … Education Week writes about the dispute between the Florida Department of Education and a private vendor over a website that was supposed to prepare teachers and students for the new standards.

Teacher evals. The FEA holds a press conference to step up its criticism. Coverage from Orlando Sentinel, Gradebook, The Florida Current, First Coast News.

Agenda for ed conference. The fifth annual Excellence in Action National Summit on Education Reform, put on by the Foundation for Excellence in Education, is next week. Full agenda here.

Private school problems. Both the Bradenton Herald and Sarasota Herald-Tribune take a look at issues with The Prep Academy.

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.