Bartleby Project

Yesterday the Republican controlled Florida House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 736, openly admitting they didn't have a clue how much it cost, or where the money is supposed to come from.  The bill will now go to Governor Scott who at the moment appears to have every intention of signing it into law.

Before we go too far, I'm not a teacher, or an educator, I'm finding  some of the demands teachers have been making nationwide unreasonable.  We're in a recession, they're demanding pay increases at a time when more people are getting fired than getting payraises.  I don't even want to get started on the union issues.

The RTTT related education reform proposals state legislatures are considering at the moment have nothing to do with payraises or unions, in my opinion it's best kept that way.

Cost estimates run into the Billions just to develop the tests and implement the program.  On top of this there will the ongoing costs of licensing, administering and analyzing the results.  The only certainty about the funding, is the biggest portion of it will  come from Florida Taxpayers.  The legislature made it clear they had to pass the law to get their paws on Obama's Race To The Top Money.  We'll spend billions so the legislature can brag they got a fraction of it back from Washington.

Over the last few months Sandra in Brevard has published 27 blogs on this website pointing out how the logic and research behind SB 736 is flawed.  In her blog  Data Mining: An Education Reform Strategy she points out that one of the purposes of the law is to compile as much personal information as possible about our children.   In Education Reform Like a Business: Funny Business Maybe? she points out that the performance of the testing companies themselves might be in need of a little evaluation.  A USA Today study showed wide swings in year to year test performance by individual students.

Then there is the old complaint I've heard so many times from parents, teachers and administrators about teachers being forced to teach to the test.  Yesterday I listened in disbelief as republican members of the Florida House of the dismissed that as a unfounded notion.  This law bases 50% of a teachers yearly income on the results of one test, and teacher's shouldn't be expected to teach to the test?  Then there's a little matter of teacher moral, Teachers counter education reform ideas on tests, pay.

The now infamous SB 6 Education Reform the legislature here in Florida last year was vetoed by Charlie Crist after a email and phone campaign conducted by teachers and parents.  Charlie had another reason for the veto, that reason was all about Charle's dreams of becoming a US Senator.  That won't happen this year.  Scott is showing no sign of wanting to go anywhere.  Even so I think an email campaign on the scale of last years million plus effort could convince Scott to change his mind if all the emails simply had one word on them. 

Bartleby

What is Bartleby?  Over the next several days I'll go into more detail, this video will expalin the general idea.



At first he'll have no idea what it means, when he first finds out he'll laugh it off.  If he starts to get the idea that hundreds of thouands of kids simply won't take the test, he'll realize he has a problem if he signs the law.

The baby's got the hammer, again

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.  Will Rogers

The same can be said for Florida anytime the legislature is in in session.  For the last week Grumpy readers have been hearing about a scheme that has Tallahassee and Obama have teaming up to Data Mine our children, all in the name of education reform (off course).  That would allow them to

analyze information and make recommendations with the goal of aiding a person's decisions and improving quality of life."


Provide several different reporting capabilities for use by a myriad of stakeholders

From the politicians point of view, The Government knows everything it could ever want to know about a entire generation of future voters.  Everything from their basic IQ to their hobbies a well as a few things we might not want to discuss here.

It just got better, why stop with the kids, why not collect a little more information about their parents.  Representative Kelli Stargel wants the teachers to grade parents as well.  Remember, the school already ha a ton of information about students parents.  Their age, marital status, occupation, social security number, address, phone number and more.  A great deal of this information is certain to make it into the child's Microsoft Profile.  Why not categorize their parenting skills and add that to the kids profile.

There is another more immediate reason the idea is completely absurd.  It won't have any affect at all on the parenting skills of parents who "Flunk", but it will sure as hell piss them off.  The school and the school board will hear from every failing parent.  You couldn't pay me enough to answer phones either at schools or at the Board of Education for a week after report cards come out.

It may not be Politically Correct to say this, but the majority of the parents you'd expect to get "Flunked" or going to be same ones where police respond the most often to assault and domestic violence calls.  It doesn't take much imagination to figure out that the first thing some of those bad parents are going to do is pay a visit to the school.  Some of those visits will be ugly. 

Grading parents will accomplish nothing of value, it will lead to poor relationships in some cases. between entire communities and the schools, and it will strain already shaky relations between the BAD parents and the schools.  On a positive note, it will give a moment satisfaction to a few teachers, that satisfaction might end suddenly when they get confronted by a furious parent.

Everyone in every walk of life grades the people they have to deal with regularly.  Depending on your personality, the servers at restaurant you frequent might run towards you, or away form you when you come it.  The clerk at the local convenience store might mutter something to another clerk before they smile at you.  When you might leave your doctors office, the doctor might say something to his nurse about your great sense of humor... or he might say, at least I don't have to them again for a while.

Does anyone think Senator Wise or Representative Stargal would have the courage to tell individual voters exactly what they think of them?On another note Senator Wise seem determined to shove things through as soon as possible. He wants to end public input tomorrow.   He knows damned good and well people from from Central and Southern Florida can't just jump in their cars and take a ride to Tallahassee

But you can send emails

Mike Haridopolos
haridopolos.mike.web@flsenate.gov

Stephen Wise
wise.stephen.web@flsenate.gov

Thad Altman
altman.thad.web@flsenate.gov

Ritch Workman
Ritch@RitchWorkman.com

I listed the ones closest to where I live, you can find yours here

http://www.flsenate.gov/Welcome/index.cfm?CFID=249520818&CFTOKEN=29966225