DOE response to ACLU grad rates lawsuit: We're working on it

Late last week, the ACLU joined with some Palm Beach parents to sue the Florida Department of Education and several other state government leaders over the Palm Beach school district's poor graduation rates.

The claim: The district graduated too few students, and its achievement gap was too broad.

It's not like the state hasn't been trying to fix that, FLDOE spokesman Tom Butler told the Gradebook.

"Improving the state’s graduation rate is a major focus of the Department and we are pleased that some success has occurred in this area over the last several years," Butler said in an e-mail. "However, we still have much more work to do, which is why we have implemented new initiatives such as our Differentiated Accountability program and the newly adopted changes to our high school accountability system. Initiatives like these will allow us to build on our successes and ensure that our graduation rate continues to rise."

Comments

[enoughsaid]

Now I am awaiting a government grant or a PHD dissertation following the neural brain deprivation research for students who are from low socio economic backgrounds and their developmental losses due to malnutrition and lack of adequate environmental stimulation during the 0-5 years..........

Hence blaming will start towards the parental/early childhood experience and thereby shift toward the family unit being analyzed before admission to school so that adequate stimulation can be presented so kids with disadvantages can "catch up".........

oh wow....already being done at Ivy league universities as we speak.......but of course not easy to blame the parents since that would open a can of worms that cannot be regulated or criticized because it is way too sacred a realm..........

so better to bash the educational environment for its weaknesses, than the real culprit, the familial environmental deprivation.

[Make Education a Priority]

Maybe -- just maybe -- those kids that didn't graduate didn't deserve to graduate because they didn't met the requirements.

[uppity woman]

The ACLU and the DOE are working on improving graduation rates...what about parents and students?
One parents listed in the ACLU's legal brief for their suit indicated that her son has dropped out of school and she would encourage him to go back, but not until Palm Beach County provides an effective and efficient opportunity for education and graduation.
With this lack of parental support occurring pervasively the job of the DOE is nearing epic and impossible proportions.

[*watcher*]

They have just redefined "cohort graduation rates" via memo in a way that makes no sense at all. But, this is the kind of technical issue that our watered down "press" isn't even able to understand or question anymore. In fact, I haven't seen anything about it in any press anywhere in Florida. It's too bad we can't keep "failure rates" for the "free press."

[CM]

If by working on it they mean eliminating the alternate graduation process and adding additional credit requirements to high school so that more students will drop out, then yes, they are working on it full steam.

[DMJ]

Lower standards and you can graduate more. The ACLU should sue students who do not care and parents who do not either. "Graduation Rates" is another way those haters of public education can say it is not working. If students do not meet the standards they do not deserve a diploma. Diplomas should be EARNED. DOE is rushing to lower standards as we speak.

[redisni]

Can the ACLU also include Jeb B. as a defendant in their lawsuit?

[Snoopy]

We're working on it? What kind of response is that to all of the kids who didn't graduate? And rather than change what is wrong with education, they are going to change the measures of education? If you have kids, run- don't walk from Florida.

[terminator]

yeah, they're working on it.
coming up with more hairbrain schemes, new shiny bells and whistles, more pie in the sky "we're going to reinvent the wheel".
now you know what it really means. First they'll blame teachers for all the shortcomings, come up with a bunch of paperwork and unfunded mandates, shove them down the districts throats while dangling a few dollars over their heads and the beat goes on.
Teachers just need to say NO and HELL NO!
They don't call it FloriDUH for nothing!

[Money Is The Shell In The Shell Game]

How many want to bet their career on the integrity of the statistics used?

Instead of validating the statistics to see how valid the concerns are, here comes the free grades.

[JohnM]

We have so much data and access to so many ways of processing that data, maybe now we can put into effect one of my "best" ideas. Hire a teacher, as long as he/she has a bachelors degree, let them teach unencumbered for 1 year. Then use all the data collected about what the teacher did during the course of that year, for the next 29 years, to "evaluate" the teacher. Then let him/her become an administrator for 5 more years and retire. Or, let him/her become a legislator.