Spellings: Florida rocks!

In an effort to steady an increasingly wobbly No Child Left Behind, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings made Florida the first stop today on a national tour, telling lawmakers in Tallahassee that the Sunshine State deserves credit for being ahead of the curve on accountability. "States like Florida elevated this movement from an ideal into reality, pioneering the use of data, standards, and accountability systems," she said. "Not because Washington said so, but because it was the right thing for students in Florida and for the state of Florida."

No Child may have passed Congress in 2002 with overwhelming, bipartisan support, but today there is widespread discontent. Maybe it's fitting, then, that in Tally Spellings took a dig from a key Republican and a dart from a leading Democrat.

"I feel as though Florida in some ways is penalized because we set our standards higher than other states," said Rep. Joe Pickens, R-Palatka, the chair of the House Education Council, according to the Orlando Sentinel's political blog. Under No Child's rating system - which uses each state's own standardized test as a measuring stick - a majority of Florida schools are annually dubbed in need of improvement.

Meanwhile, House Democratic Leader Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, issued a written statement calling No Child a "huge unfunded mandate" that forces states to waste school money on "incessant testing." "If it isn't dramatically overhauled to give states more flexibility, and to provide funding for its mandated tests," he said, "it should be allowed to fade into the sunset."

- Ron Matus, state education reporter

Comments

Terminator must not realize that NCLB was passed with bi-partisan sponsorship and voting.

The Democrats in Congress want to continue a federal role in public education as much as the President does (maybe even more so).

The biggest critisism against NCLB in Florida is that the national standards and state accountability system have no relationship to each other. Most of the cause of this problem was actually the Florida DOE that created a Florida NCLB plan that ignored any of the underpinnings of the A+ plan. It makes both accountability systems look stupid when "A" schools fail under the federal standards and where "F" schools pass the federal system when both are based upon the exact same student scores. The Florida DOE should fix this under the new commissioner who can write a Florida NCLB plan that fits our state accountability system.

[terminator]

Ms. Spellings is toast like her buddy and mentor W.

NCLB will be neutered to the point of inconsequence by the upcoming Congress and unions.

Say bye bye Bushies! You can stick a fork in those guys.

Quack Quack.

[caleb]

And these Florida Rocks of which you speak, they fall from heads of Florida Citizens, no? Please to be explaining.

[What was that]

Florida rocks? What about the high school dropout rate? What about our college students attending without pre-requisite skills? Did we have amazing ACT,SAT, and AP scores that I missed? What Florida was Ms.
Spelling referring to in her speech?
The Florida in the same fantasyland as
NCLB?

[What was that]

Florida rocks? What about the high school dropout rate? What about our college students attending without pre-requisite skills? Did we have amazing ACT,SAT, and AP scores that I missed? What Florida was Ms.
Spelling referring to in her speech?
The Florida in the same fantasyland as
NCLB?