A weekend interview with ...

... Roy Romer, former Colorado governor and LA schools superintendent. Romer lately has been working with Ed in '08 to make education issues a priority in the presidential campaign. He spoke with reporter Ron Matus while attending an education conference in Orlando.

Obviously you've spent a lot of time on this campaign, getting the message out that education is important. But it still isn't on the front burner as an issue. Why isn't it getting more traction?

We have made some gains but it's not on the front burner. You're absolutely right. The issues on the front burner are the war, the economy, health care, global warming and energy. Education, if you do exit polls, it's not one of the issues. So we have made progress because candidates now are discussing it more than they did before, but not yet enough.

Now let's go to the question of why? Couple reasons. One, there is a general malaise in America that we're doing better than we think. They think we're doing better than we are. In Iowa, when I went there, I spoke to the Rotary Club in Des Moines, and I would remind them that they rate their eighth graders as 65 percent proficient. Then I'd remind them that NAEP, the national test, would rate their eighth graders at 35 percent proficient. And I would remind them that if they compared them to Singapore, they're 25 percent proficient. But they think they're doing okay in their local suburban school. The urban schools, they know they're in trouble.

So, one, the general public just doesn't have an awareness of how far we're falling behind and how far their child is behind compared to other eighth graders in the world.

The second issue is, it's not comfortable for candidates for federal offices to come to town and talk about I'm going to fix education because of state's rights. They fear that they're encroaching upon a territory that states and local governments have primary responsibility for. And it is a shared responsibility, frankly. I don't want them to federalize education. But I just notice that candidates are hesitant. They'll talk about Medicare because we legislate on that area. They'll talk about global warming and all that. But on education, they are hesitant because they don't know how to engage that conversation and to implement what it is they're talking about. And we've got to work on that.

They could at least talk about things like No Child. They're not even doing that.

I understand what you're saying. And when you push me as to why, so far in campaigns people often turn to sound bites. And in education the sound bite that's worked the best, that gets the most applause, is anti-test. You follow? Anti-test. So anti-test, No Child forces us to do more tests. It's shallow thinking. Shallow. I used to train people to fly airplanes. We had to have tests to see whether you were safe. You'd train a person on navigation, then you'd give them a test. And God, if they can't navigate the plane, they're going to kill people, know what I mean? Tests are important to verify whether you've learned what it is that you are supposed to learn.

So how do you turn this around? How do you get more people thinking about education.

A weekend interview with ...

... Barbara Elzie, deputy director of Just Read, Florida! The state agency recently released a summer reading list, and Elzie talked about it with reporter Jeff Solochek.

For people who are not familiar with Just Read, Florida!, give us a brief synopsis of what you do.

The Just Read, Florida! office and the Just Read, Florida! initiative are the state's overarching reading initiative that covers parents, students, teachers - anything having to do with reading is part of the Just Read, Florida! initiative. Gov. Bush when he was in office he created the Just Read, Florida! because he felt like we needed an overarching comprehensive office ... that managed and made sure the things that needed to happen in reading happened. ...

And one of the things that you do is create a summer reading list. Can you tell me a little bit about how you come up with the summer reading list?

Sure. We look at a number of sources. There's a children literature comprehensive database. We go to that to find books. ... We are pulling from many other sources. Barnes and Noble has a best seller reading list for children and teens. There's a Florida book awards web site that we sometimes go to. There's another web site called the Sunshine State Young Readers web site. We use that. So basically we're looking to all those sources to get ideas for high interest, high quality literature for students. ...

Sometimes we do get books that come in directly to this office from an author. It's a really good thing to be on the Just Read, Florida! recommended reading list. And so when that happens, we have a staff assistant who reads the books, determines the eligibility, checks for all the things we have to check for like appropriateness of language or content material. Sometimes we do end up doing our own review.

Now, you said it's a good thing to be on the Just Read, Florida! list. Why?

Well, the Just Read, Florida! web site is your one-stop shopping for anything reading. And we have information for teachers and parents and students. And the Just Read, Florida! web site was created about six years ago. Over time, it gets thousands of hits. Teachers, parents, families going in. So it's a very high profile web site. To be on one of those recommended reading lists is a feather in the crown for an author.

You mentioned parents. Should parents be reading these books also? Or should they just be referring them to their kids?

A weekend interview with ...

... Kurt Geisinger, executive director of the Buros Center for Testing at the University of Nebraska. Geisinger has been working with the Florida Department of Education to monitor and improve the FCAT exam, following scoring problems with the 2006 third-grade reading test. He spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek after the release of this year's scores.

Did the test scoring and the test results go better this year?

I think that's right, and in part because they had a larger what we call calibration sample. Calibration is one of those things that is very technical, but it basically gets around to the type of adjustments that we make to bathroom scales. Where you're raising it up or lowering it down a little bit depending on if the items are a little easier or harder than the previous year. ... If you have a test of 30 items, it's hard to generate a test that is exactly equivalent year after year. ...

Did you do them? Or did someone else?

No. We don't do them. We were hired for what I call an audit, which is to spot check some of the work. ... There are really four parties, and we were asked as part of our contract with the state of Florida to sort of listen in. So we were added to the e-mail listings that were going back and forth as they were looking to do the calibrations. Because it really is a very complicated mathematical and technical problem. And we thought they did a really fine job, and everything was within - even the one you are probably calling about, that is the fifth-grade reading - was still within the normal variation. I mean, people don't quite understand sometimes that this is not a truly exact science. So you look at even annual results for a state, and you say, If Florida were - actually the kids in the fifth grade - were improving their reading one or two percent a year, could on a given day the test result in a five percent decline? And that's actually not that improbable.

There are people in the schools, though, who are expressing their surprise at the fifth-grade reading and they're saying they don't jibe with their reality. They want to look at them more closely to see if there was a problem. You're saying there is no problem?

A weekend interview with ...

... Polly Jackson, a reading specialist at Pasco County's Lacoochee Elementary, a Title I school. Jackson is retiring this month after 39 years in education, most of them at Lacoochee. She spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek about the changes she's seen over her four decades in teaching.

Tell me a little bit about what it was like to teach in 1969.

I've done a lot of reflecting over the past few weeks. I was a fifth-grade teacher at Pasco Elementary. We were departmentalized, so I taught math, which was a love of mine. I was a math major for a while at school. The rooms were un-air-conditioned. I had over 30 children. The desks were mismatched, some painted in various colors of the rainbow. But it was my first classroom and I loved it. It was special. I think the biggest difference between when I started as a first-year teacher and now is there was no support for brand new teachers ... whereas now there is fantastic support.

Well, then, what did they do for you as a brand new teacher? Throw you in there and say, Good luck?

Basically, yes. I remember going into a book room and we found the reading books that we wanted. It wasn't one unified series for the district. It did have teacher's guides. Reading series have come so far. It's exciting, the new series that we'll be starting next year. It makes me a tiny bit sorry I won't be a part of it. But it's a good time for someone new to come in and learn it.

So back then you went in and it was basically sink or swim on your own?

There were other teachers who were there and would help. But now they have a mentor program where the teachers are assigned a mentor throughout the year, takes them through each step. And of course there wasn't as much paperwork back then. There wasn't the FCAT. There wasn't a lot of the assessments that we do, the ongoing monitoring.

What made you stay in teaching at that point? Was it hard? Was it fun?

I enjoyed it. Teaching was fun. It was fun.

Is it still fun now?

A weekend interview with ...

... Jon Scieszka, an award winning children's author (The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!) who has been appointed first National Ambassador of Young People's Literature by the Library of Congress. Scieszka spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek about keeping kids reading.

How do we get kids to keep reading when there is no assignment?

That's actually the best opportunity, because I think a bit of the problem now is that kids aren't getting to read for entertainment. They have to read just for school and they think of it just as an assignment. So summer is actually kind of the best time where they can pick a much wider range of reading. And that's like a fun thing to do. Because then kids get to pick from things like graphic novels, comic books, wordless books, picture books, humor books, comic strips, science fiction. Non-fiction is a great one, too.

About all those different kinds. I've been noticing that some of them have been filtering in to schools more and more, like graphic novels and comic books. How do we call that reading? I remember that being a distraction when I was growing up.

That's actually a very interesting thing that's been happening in the business in say the last five years or so, starting with more sophisticated picture books, even, which led the way for kids reading visually. So they're actually reading the artwork, which is quite a skill these days, considering how much design is out there in the world. And now the stuff that is out there available in comic book form, or what is called graphic novel form now, which is a great mixture or words and pictures, is just really spectacular.

I wonder about comprehension on those types of books. Because I've seen kids go to tests, for instance, if the story includes a picture and the picture doesn't show what the story is telling, they get the questions wrong because they're looking at the picture and they see one thing that the story doesn't necessarily say.

Yeah. Well, actually, that's probably a problem with the test, which I think we should address more and like fix the test. Because the kids are smart and they're actually answering the questions for what's being shown. So I would be a fan of just saying fix the test, not the kids.

I know a lot of people are very familiar with your work, and a lot of it is funny. It's okay to be funny and to enjoy the reading?

A weekend interview with ...

... Riverview High School graduating senior Antonio Dowels. Dowels, 18, was a top-rated athlete who dreamed of attending the University of Florida to play football and study to become a pediatrician. A car crash dashed his football dreams, but not his spirit or dedication. Though paralyzed physically, Dowels retains his ambition to become a children's doctor. He will attend UF in the fall. Dowels spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek. (Times photo, 2007, click to enlarge)

I know you had this accident that really changed your life. I was just interested in you talking about how it affected the way you looked at what you were going to do when it came to your schooling and your future.

Well, it affected me. But I still knew that I was going to come back to school. Because I love school. I love education and I love to learn. The only thing that affected me was me running. I love sports. And I miss it every day, running. But I knew that when I was going to go to college to become a pediatrician, I know it's going to be really hard to do hands-on things, because my fingers don't really function. But I was thinking that I can be like an administrator, and you know, it hasn't affected me that much.

What is it that you love about learning so much that it kept you going and thinking about it rather than saying, I'm just going to give up?

I just love obtaining knowledge. And I know that I need to learn to be a pediatrician. And to do something that you love, it takes almost 12 years, you have to learn. You have to love to learn. You know, a lot of people want to be astronauts and physicists, but they don't know how hard it is. They're going to have to work to be good at what they do.

Did you ever think that you wouldn't be able to do what your passion is because you can't move your fingers, do the things you might normally associate with being a pediatrician?

No, sir. I never say 'can't.' I know you can always find a different way to do stuff. So when I got hurt, I told everyone: Three months, I'm going to be back in school, learning, playing with the kids, harassing Mr. (Robert) Heilman (the school principal). A lot of people didn't believe me. But I worked real hard. It was just hard work and determination. I came back.

What did you have to do to get to that point?

A weekend interview with ...

... interim Pinellas superintendent Julie Janssen. A 28-year veteran of the district, Janssen, 59, has worked as a math teacher, school principal and deputy superintendent. Now she'll take the reins of control, at least temporarily, as Clayton Wilcox leaves in June. Janssen spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek via e-mail about the district's future and her own.

Why did you want to become interim superintendent?

When I accepted the role as deputy superintendent two years ago, I knew there would be times when I would fill in for the superintendent in his absence. As deputy, I already am integrally involved in all levels of decision making. When Dr. Wilcox announced he was leaving, offering to step up as interim was the right thing to do to maintain consistency in the district.

The district is headed for some tough times, not the least of which being the budget cuts.  Talk about the difficulties of taking over the top job now.

Managing a district in times of extremely limited education funding is challenging and difficult in a many respects. Based on the state's financial projections there doesn't appear to be any relief in the near future. It's difficult to identify areas to trim costs when we already have made substantial cuts in the range of $32-million over the past two years. Facing an additional $37-million next year means there's a good possibility that some positions could be eliminated and employees reassigned. Our district has faced these challenges before and we'll work through them together. I'm confident our finance team will assist us in looking at all possible solutions before submitting a balanced budget for board approval.

The district's employee unions have suggested a morale crisis exists. How do you intend to improve employee relations?

A weekend interview with ...

... Heather Fiorentino, Pasco County schools superintendent. Fiorentino, also a former state lawmaker, talked with reporter Jeff Solochek about the fallout from the recently ended Florida legislative session.

Are there any things that come out of Tallahassee that you think are good?

If we get the $10-million for concurrency, that would be a positive thing. Because as we continue to grow and we need to build schools, that will assist us in building roads around schools and prevent the county and the school district, who are both being hit by the financial impacts, from fighting over who's fighting for what there.

A lot of people like the changes that they rolled all into one bill that dealt with the grading changes and the FCAT. (SB 1908) Do you see anything that's good in there?

One of the things that I've learned is that you also have to wait for the DOE to get done. Because the intent of the Legislature and what the DOE puts into rule sometimes is a little mixed. What you think is going to come out isn't quite the same. So I'll kind of wait until the rules come down. Because that will have a big impact on how it affects us.

The one thing that I have a little concern over is the NRT (norm-referenced test), getting rid of the NRT. I understand making it 50 percent of the grade. I think if we can move away from the FCAT, because there's so many wonderful things going on in the schools, that's important to know without having it based on just one test in a snapshot in time. Everyone wants accountability. There's nothing wrong with accountability as long as it's fair. But removing the NRT, I have concerns over that. And the reason is, because it says currently 33 percent is the FCAT score at the secondary level. But when you look at our high school kids compared to the rest of the nation, we're in the 70s. ... There's a real misalignment there. There had to be a better alignment. And I'm not sure a better alignment is getting rid of the NRT.

The one bill that sort of brought out a lot of controversy was the PE bill. (SB 610) A lot of it had to do with the middle schools. But another part of it had to do with the fact that they want the 30 minutes to be consecutive at the elementary level.

That is a big concern.

Then the debate seemed to roll out into the whole idea that we need a longer school day. I was wondering if you could talk about that. I know there's not a lot of money, necessarily. But do we need a longer school day?

A weekend interview with ...

... Cindy Gustafson, president of Partners Allied for Gifted Education and Support in Hernando County. Gustafson talked with reporter Jeff Solochek about Hernando's move to centralize gifted education into a single K-8 school.

When the idea came up to create this plan, where were you on that?

Well, I can tell you how it came about. ... Because we are a support group, basically the people who call us are having problems, issues or concerns. So we were hearing all the negatives, none of the positives. Our district had gone to a decentralized type of situation. They had originally had gifted housed under the district offices, the teachers all reported to one person. Then they parceled it out to the various schools. So you had principals hiring different teachers. ... You had 19 different programs at 19 different schools. In the middle schools, the only thing they offered was one period of language arts. That's it. High school, they only offered gifted English. Nothing else. It had just kind of deteriorated over time.

By the time we came into the picture, there weren't too many people happy with what was going on. Which was instrumental in our efforts. Basically, it spurred us on to do some research, determine the history of how things had been going with gifted. And that's when we noticed in going through the St. Pete Times archives, thank you very much, that Mr. (Jim) Malcolm had over the years been dropping, well, actually kind of asking for a gifted center.

So you contacted Mr. Malcolm then?

We called him. We were like, In '02, in '99, in '03, in '06, you keep bringing up this gifted center. ... Has there been any other movement on it other than what's been in the paper? You know, stuff behind the scenes? And he said, well, sadly, there hasn't been. And we asked if we could meet with him. And he said, sure. And then in the interim ... we got with all the gifted teachers in the county and did a little anonymous survey.

We promised them anonymity, told them we would be meeting with a School Board member, and said, you know, what do you think the strengths are in the current program. What are the concerns you have presently? And any recommendations. Pretty much everyone agreed on two or three main things, and then of course we had additional concerns that weren't uniform. ... The fact that it was decentralized rather than centralized, and the fact that there wasn't any sort of comprehensive, cohesive curriculum - you had a lot of overlap, you had a lot of duplication.

We presented that information to Mr. Malcolm. And his response was, Okay, we have 19 different schools doing 19 different things and all the problems inherent with that. Hmmmm. What can we do about this? He's like, said, I don't think that's surmountable. The only way we're going to be able to improve things and make a difference is if we have all the gifted children in one center. ...

Do you feel like the answer of that gifted center is the right one ... to all the questions you have been raising about the gifted program? Because I think one of the things I would think about is, let's say the gifted center is too far away and now my school doesn't have any gifted program.

A weekend interview with ...

... Tyler Radford, who until recently was a Land O'Lakes High School senior. Radford, 18, dropped out in the third quarter and got his GED instead. Now, as most of his friends and classmates head toward graduation, he just hangs around the school, lacking anything better to do. That's where he talked with reporter Jeff Solochek (and some other Land O'Lakes seniors).

"I was a semester away from graduating. Then I was like, I don't feel like it anymore," Radford explained.

So he stopped doing his work. "All of it," he said. Before long, Radford discovered that he needed to earn scores of more than 100 percent in every class if he was to receive the credits he needed for graduation.

Realizing the futility of the scenario, he walked away. Already, Radford sounds remorseful.

"I'm dumb," he said. "I got lazy."

With GED in hand, Radford has little in store. He didn't apply to any colleges - community, trade or otherwise - and he doesn't hold a full-time job.

What are his plans?

"That's the best part," he said. "I don't have any. Probably just skateboarding and living on minimum wage and stuff."

A weekend interview with ...

... State Board of Education member Phoebe Raulerson. Raulerson, a former superintendent of Okeechobee schools, frequently has pushed for more hands-on training for high school students, voicing the concern that existing school curriculum does not work for every student. She now serves on a 26-member national task force charged with finding innovative ways to integrate career and technical education opportunities into the nation's high schools. She spoke with reporter Donna Winchester about career education.

A lot of school districts are working hard to meet the legislative mandate to create rigorous career technical education programs. What are some things school districts should keep in mind as they move forward in this area?

They have to keep in mind they need to see data on each child. I like the idea of the accountability, that a percentage of the students need to be involved in the industry and pass whatever the state test is. That will show that the program is strong, that we're preparing students for a good life. We're also helping our lifestyle by keeping each of those industries strong.

One of the other things districts need to do is give teachers enough in-service so they can earn their own national accreditation. Another thing I'd like to see is more English and math embedded in the career technical programs. There are very few programs where there is enough of that crossover. Hopefully, as time goes by, we will build more of that into the programs so kids can see the real reason for knowing the English, the math, the science. The whole point of teaching children math and science and language arts is that it is something they can use. It's not just, "You can use this some day." For a lot of kids, they need to see the relevance of it.

Do you foresee a danger in districts creating too many programs too quickly?

There could be a question of quantity over quality. But there is that piece that says a percentage of kids need to pass those national standards. If they can do that, it tells you the quality of the program is good. If you can't get kids successfully through the program to the point where they can meet those national standards, you need to shut that program down and start something else. There are programs that won't immediately produce results. You've got to do the teacher training and so forth. But you can't give it too much time. We'll use the data to help us know what we're doing right and how to fix it if it's wrong. If we can't fix it, we'll need to turn to something else.

What else appeals to you about this new foray into career technical education?

A weekend interview with ...

... Karen Dowd, executive director for the Florida Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Dance and Sport. Dowd, who also serves on the Governor's Council on Physical Fitness, spoke with reporter Donna Winchester about proposals to increase the amount of physical activity that students get in Florida's elementary and middle schools.

Florida lawmakers decided last spring that elementary students should receive 150 minutes a week of physical education. That rule has come under fire recently for being an unfunded mandate that has caused school districts to come up with all types of creative ways to meet the letter of the law while in many cases skirting its intent. What is your view of the legislation?

Our organization fully supported that bill. It was with the best of intentions that legislators introduced it. Unfortunately, in some schools and in some school districts, the interpretation was to cobble together minutes whenever the children were not sitting at their desks. To me, that is not the spirit of the mandate. We know that if we want children to increase their physical fitness levels they must participate in activities at a reasonable level of intensity for reasonable durations of time and in reasonable frequency during the school week. When schools make the decision to count the 2 minutes it takes to walk to the lunch room or to the media center, those little mini trips do not contribute significantly to a child's well-being, nor to their fitness levels.

What about what districts like Pinellas have done: doubling and tripling up classes and using non certified P.E. teachers?

That's a problem. First of all, a teacher assistant is not a certified teacher with the background to make decisions about what the children are doing. Our national standards in physical education published by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education state that the size of a physical education class for purposes of learning and teaching and safety should not exceed the class size in any other academic area. When they put two or three classes with a teacher or a teacher and a teacher assistant or two, that is not appropriate. It will by its nature require more standing around and less active participation by the children. Therefore, there will be less learning. More important, it takes the safety equation right off the charts.

We know that for adults, it's important to maintain the heart rate for a certain amount of time based on age. Is it the same for children?

The physiology of children and their growth and developmental stages are significantly different from an adult's. Because of that, children do not need time frames as extensive as adults. That does not excuse a great deal of standing around. However, we need to understand that physical education is not exclusively about physical fitness. It's not uncommon for a casual observer to look at an elementary physical education class and say, "That's not helping their fitness at all." But in fact a significant part of physical education, especially for the younger grade levels, is about skill development. It is about the basic motoric skills of balance and increasing and decreasing speed and judging what their bodies can and cannot do.

What should a physical education class look like?

A weekend interview with ...

... Mary Jo McGrath, a California lawyer whose company trains schools and businesses on matters including sexual harassment and misconduct. She is considered one of the nation's leading experts on teacher sexual misconduct. McGrath spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek after three recent Tampa Bay area teacher misconduct arrests, which gained national attention. (Photo from California Catholic Daily, 2007)

We're hearing a lot about this now. But is it really any worse now than it has been in the past?

Not in my opinion. I have been aware of this issue since the early '80s in my law practice. I, here in California, was hired by school boards to dismiss incompetent teachers then. At one point I was called by one of the superintendents who said, I've got one that I don't think you can do anything about, but here are the accusations. That was my first acquaintance with a sexual misconduct case. And pretty much the attitude was, well, you can't do anything about it unless you actually catch the teacher in bed with the student. So it was a very high threshold of evidence that was in peoples' way of thinking. So, that was way back when. As I was successful with that case, more and more of them came my way.

Do you think perhaps that as people pay more attention and each one of these cases gets attention, the more people are willing to say something?

Yes. And I think what is vitally important, and we'll see what happens this time, the issue of sexual abuse is cyclical. People pay attention to it, they get upset about it, things start to happen, and then it goes into the background. There is something about, it's almost so intolerable to deal with, that a community can only deal with it for a certain length of time and then it goes back to complacency rather than staying alert that this does go on. Sexual abuse in schools, it's an opportunistic crime. The people who tend to behave this way, they gravitate to schools.

Because there are children there, obviously.

Because there are children there. And we're naive in our thinking in terms of our saying, we send our children to school to be safe and that's that, that's the end of our responsibility. Schools should make the place safe. As long as parents have that kind of attitude, their children are not going to be safe. People need to know that this is an opportunistic crime. People who commit it go to schools. And they fly below the radar for years. So if parents and educators are not alert to the early warning signs, then children are going to continue to get hurt. So it isn't the pedophiles that are going to stop. It's the people in the educational environment, including the parents, including the administrators, including the other teachers and the staff, who have to make it stop.

How can they do that?

A weekend interview with ...

... Benjamin Ajak, co-author of "They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky," an award-winning 2005 book about boys caught up in civil war in Sudan. Ajak was 5 years old when government troops destroyed his village. For years, he and thousands of other boys wandered from one bad situation to another. Many of them died along the way. Eventually, Ajak ended up at a refugee camp where he faced a tough choice: Hustle for money and feed yourself well. Or go to school and eat once a day. Ajak chose school.

Lakewood High in Pinellas is using Ajak's book to try to instill a love of reading into its students. You can read more about the program in Sunday's St. Petersburg Times. Ajak, who visited Lakewood High this week, talked with reporter Ron Matus about education and reading. His comments have been edited slightly for space and clarity. (Photo from Louisville High School student newspaper)

Why was the school at the refugee camp so important to you?

Well, school is very important to me, because I have no mother, I have no father, and I don't have any other close relatives. So I think that school is going to be my parents and is going to be my future.

How did you make the connection between school and a better life, and between reading and a better life. Did your parents teach you that?

When I seen what is going on around the world, I believe to myself that if I can make education a No. 1 key for me, and I could open my future door with my education, that would help me a lot. I just learned that on my own.

What do you think of the fact that everybody at Lakewood High is reading your book?

A weekend interview with ...

... Debbie Johnston, a Cape Coral teacher and mother who has tried for three years to convince Florida lawmakers to pass the "The Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act" (SB 790) in honor of her son, who committed suicide in 2005 after being harassed and bullied at school. Johnston spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek about the bill, her son, and her efforts to bring the legislation to the federal level, too. (AP photo, 2006)

Tell me why you're pushing so hard for this anti-bullying bill.

Because it's such a preventable death. People don't realize the scale on which this is occurring and because of lack of training even when we try to address it, we're addressing it in the schools incorrectly, mostly because we do what's always been done. And what the research has proven is that the methods we're using not only are ineffective, but they actually empower the bullying and they contribute to post-traumatic stress in the victim.

What specifically do you see that's wrong?

What we've done for so long is we've really concentrated on the victims and changing their behavior. You know. We tell them to laugh it off, ignore it. We teach them about resiliency and everything. And it really sends the message that they've done something wrong, something to deserve this. Because we just thought there are kids out there who are mean. But what the research shows is that the most significant factor contributing to bullies' bullying behavior is kids that have been bullied either at school or by an older sibling or, in most cases, in the home by a parent. And that children unless they're taught differently they have only one way of expressing pain, fear or frustration - and that is with anger. So they come to school angry. They push that off onto another kid and they temporarily feel better, they feel empowered.

It's kind of the case of the man forgetting to kiss his wife. So she fusses at the kid and the kid kicks the dog. It just travels down the line. What we've found is if we address the problems with the bully and treat the problem at that level and get some interventions in there ... then we stop it at the source.

What does the bill do specifically that you think is good?

Well, the bill really is not a punitive bill at all unless the parents absolutely refuse to get treatment for a child who poses a threat to himself or others. ... It states that every district will have in its code of conduct a section that defines bullying and that describes how it should be handled and meets the minimum standards that are outlined by the model that the Department of Education will come up with. A lot of districts already have codes of conduct that are already up to that standard or they go further. And as long as they are doing that then they've got a good handle on the bullying. But if they don't have those things in there, then it really ties the hands of the educators who are trying to deal with it.

In Jeffrey's case, it was never a secret. Everyone knew what was going on. And we attempted to address it. But we were so limited in what we could do because there was nothing about bullying in the code of conduct. It was looked at as a peer conflict, which was a minor offense on the same level as being tardy or chewing gum.

Tell us a little more about what did happen with your son.

A weekend interview with ...

... Shan Goff, executive director of the Florida Department of Education Office of Early Learning, and Dr. Tara Huls, program specialist. They spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek about changing education standards for Florida's Voluntary Prekindergarten program. (No, they're not nearly as controversial as the K-12 science standards.)

Why are we looking at the pre-k standards?

Shan Goff: If we go back a few years to when the State Board of Education first adopted the pre-k education standards, which was in March of '05,there was the commitment to the state board that we would review and revise the standards as necessary on a three-year cycle. the state board wanted to be sure that the VPK standards remained in alignment with what the research tells us and, very specifically, what our expectations are in K-12.

You say 'as necessary.' So, what's necessary?

SG: The piece that we knew we would have to tackle this year was the math portion. Remember, we don't necessarily say the word 'math' in preschool. That is what most of us recognize it is. But typically it's underneath our learning domain of cognitive development. And since we passed the '05 VPK standards, Florida adopted the world-class math standards for K-12 that use the best research that was available for that particular standard setting activity. So we took the opportunity to re-look at all of our standards but focusing very specifically on cognitive development. And we've pretty much followed the same process we did when we looked at the emergent literacy piece.

What I saw was, instead of a handful of lines, a bunch of details. Not just understanding numbers, but counting to 31.

A weekend interview with ...

... Pinellas School Board chairwoman Nancy Bostock. Bostock talked with reporter Donna Winchester about the district's efforts to update the Code of Student Conduct, particularly regarding its zero tolerance policy for weapons on campus.

Where does the district stand in its revamp of the Code of Student Conduct?

We make revisions to the code of student conduct annually on an as-needed basis, but we use a three-year cycle to do a complete and full review of the code to bring forth more substantive changes. We're in the midst of doing that now. We've gotten input from different stakeholder groups – principals, teachers, PTA members. The committee that collected that input has brought it to the board for our input. The new code goes into effect in August '08, so the board will finalize the recommendations this spring or in early summer.

What are some of the key changes the district is looking to make this time around?

We're looking to clarify our policies that visitors coming to the front offices of schools need to show picture IDs. That's always been in place, but we're putting in stronger language because we have better technology in the offices to run background checks on parents coming on to our campuses.

We are also, like Hillsborough County, looking at our policy on electronic items. We're making a distinction now between instructional and non-instructional use of electronic items. We're aware that sometimes there is an instructional use for certain electronic items in the classroom. We're also going to look at our policy on when and under what circumstances use of cell phones and electronic items would be appropriate in schools.

I guess one of the bigger items we're looking at is the classification of air soft guns and how discipline will be handled for students who bring those types of guns to campus. The proposal in front of us would redefine air soft guns not as guns as they currently are defined but as dangerous objects. The advantage in doing that is that it will give our school administrators more flexibility in how we discipline students who bring air soft guns to school.

What happens now to kids who are caught with an air soft gun?

A weekend interview with ...

... state Rep. John Legg, a New Port Richey Republican who serves as vice chairman of the House Education Committee and a deputy whip in the House. Legg spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek about the education measures that will be discussed in the legislative session.

The legislative session begins Tuesday. I want to know what you see as being the top 5 priorities in education, what bills we're actually going to see happen and what bills we won't.

Well, I'll start off with my bill, of course, because I'm working on it. One of the big bills you will see is taking a look at gifted - how we track gifted, how we screen for gifted, how we fund gifted and some of the best practices models on gifted education. So I know you're going to see a gifted bill move through the House this year and we're optimistic.

Will the Senate be doing something similar?

I believe so. I believe there is some commitment, bipartisan, both chambers as well, working on this. So I think you're going to see some changes, positive, affecting our gifted community.

Bigger issues that you're going to see that aren't specifically mine. One is dealing with the class size amendment. Rep. Simmons is going to put forward a statutory revision. I think it's a very workable solution. It's not a gimmick to get around class size. It's just a very practical addressing of the problem which is, you have 18 students on day one. What happens when that nineteenth student moves in around Christmas time? Do you separate your classes? How do you work that?

Is this something that will actually make it to the floor and get a vote? Or is this just something that will knock around committees for a while?

I hope it comes to the floor. I see it coming to the floor. I think Simmons has worked hard. Teacher unions, school board associations and superintendent associations all acknowledge that there is a logistical issue here of the nineteenth student. And I think you are going to see something come out that we are able to pass out of the House. I don't have much sense of the Senate or what they'll do. I think they're working and watching to see the validity of Simmons' proposal.

Talk to me a little bit about the end of course exams and where that is headed.

A weekend interview with ...

... Dr. Jay B. Labov, a senior adviser for education and communications for the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council. He also oversees the National Academies' activities to improve the teaching of evolution in public schools. Labov spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek about Florida's new science standards.

Generally, relating to Florida's new standards, how do you view them?

Well, it's a good thing, first of all, that they're actually acknowledging evolution and including the word in the standards. And I also think it's good news that the standards explicitly state, and the board adopted the idea, that evolution is one of the big ideas in science and one of the underlying principles of biology.

So the words 'scientific theory' don't bother you?

It is a scientific theory. I notice they also put those words in front of other things such as the scientific theory of cells, which is also true. So I think it may have been an attempt to try to mollify some people who think that theory is something less than how scientists think about it. Theory is the highest level of evidence and explanation in the scientific world. But the fact that they also included that next to the scientific theory of cells, for instance, or atoms, suggests that theory is at a high level. So if evolution is equal to those theories, or vice versa, I would say that's probably reasonable.

But we also know that evolution is a fact. In our book Science, Evolution and Creationism, if you look on page 11 you'll see a whole box that asks the question 'Is evolution a theory or a fact?' And it points out why it's both.

I have seen a lot of people commenting in different places that evolution is not a theory, it's the theory. And so they kind of take issue with the way the State Board of Education wiggled around it. I was wondering what you think about that.

I didn't realize the word 'a' or 'the.' It is the scientific theory or explanation that is accepted by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community. It has evidence from many, many different disciplines, it is one of the most robust theories in its ability to explain and predict in all of science. ... It's also been shown over the course of years, and as new disciplines have come on line, such as molecular biology, that's only served to reinforce and build upon what we already have known about the theory of evolution for a long time.

So why has this not become the law of evolution, for instance?

A weekend interview with ...

... Bob Wise, a former governor of West Virginia who now heads the Alliance for Excellence Education, an advocacy group that focuses on high school reforms geared toward making sure every high school student graduates ready for the world of college or work. Wise visited Tampa to speak to the National Superintendent's Forum. He spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek about No Child Left Behind, secondary school literacy initiatives and related subjects.

What is the main message that you bring?

The topic is about educational leadership, and my message is how important it is. But also, this group has an interest in literacy and the importance of education leaders, whether they are in education or they are political or in business, to understand the significance of literacy, particularly in secondary schools. ... Florida is actually one of the, if not the most advanced states in recognizing this.

How would you quantify that for Florida?

I quantify that by the fact that first of all the state is recognized and put literacy in the middle schools and the high schools, particularly in the middle schools. Simply the recognition that reading and comprehension doesn't stop at the fourth grade is a significant achievement. Until just a few years ago most states did not have an effective secondary literacy program. Florida was one of the first to develop it.

The NAEP data is the best evidence of that. If you look nationally at the NAEP scores in reading for fourth graders, they are going up. ... But you look at NAEP scores for eighth graders, and you see that they have leveled off and they are making far less gain and, indeed, depending on how you interpret the NAEP data, you've got only 30 percent nationally reading at a proficient level. ...

It sounds like that means there's a lot of work to be done.

There's an incredible amount of work. Because if you have 70 percent of your eighth graders coming into high school barely reading at grade level and 29 percent of them reading two or three grades below level ... then you've got a recipe for a high dropout rate. And indeed, I can take a look at a state's dropout rate and it will be within a point or two of the eighth-grade "below basic" reading levels.

Let's talk about dropout rates. I know that's something you focus on, but also Florida has been talking about how they have a horrible dropout rate and they have to do even more.

A weekend interview with ...

... Rick Kurtz, food and nutrition services director for Pasco County schools. Kurtz was one of many school district food services directors to remove beef from cafeterias while the U.S. Department of Agriculture investigates charges of inhumane and unsafe treatment of cattle at a slaughterhouse that supplies the school lunch program. He spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek about his decision and the impact on the lunch program for the future.

What prompted you to take action when you heard that there were concerns?

Well, I'm a parent. And if I had heard the initial reports I would be concerned about what my students are eating at school. And I'm very conservative. When I look at the fact that we have the most precious commodity that we serve, and that's children, we're just not going to take that risk. We didn't know enough about the situation to be serving some beef and not other beef products. So we decided to be as conservative as possible.

My understanding was that this was something local to California. Did it affect Florida in any meaningful way that you knew of?

Oh, yeah. The meat packing plants were out of Chino, California. The information started flowing from California early last week (week of Jan. 27). My first communications that we started hearing about it late Thursday and Friday. The more that was being discussed, then we found out it has broad impact, nationwide impact. It was the Hallmark Meat Packing Co. which sells meat to the Westland Meat Co., and they're all in California but they're the largest supplier of USDA beef. They do like 100-million pounds a year. And we had gotten information on Friday that some of the commodity beef ... based on communication with the Florida Department of Agriculture some of the beef designated for Florida and Florida schools was definitely beef from the Westland meat processing company. Then we determined on Friday that we just weren't going to serve any beef this week and make substitutions for next week to give us time to get to the bottom of the story and to gauge the public's concerns about beef and then try to make a determination of how we're going to move forward.

Is this an unusual circumstance? Or does this happen more often than we know and this is just one of the times we've heard about it?

It's very unusual. Especially this widespread. And I have not looked at the video, and I do not intend to look at the video. But anybody who does is going to be extremely upset and they're going to be concerned about how this could occur. And I think there will be ripple effects in terms of public perception on food safety, even outside of USDA commodities.

So do you then start thinking of not serving beef ever?

A weekend interview with ...

... John Kirtley (second from left), vice-chairman of the board of the Alliance for School Choice and head of the Florida Education Freedom Foundation. The Alliance For School Choice is a national organization, and the Florida Education Freedom Foundation a state based one, that have the same mission: bringing more K-12 educational options to low income parents. Kirtley spoke via e-mail with reporter Jeff Solochek about school choice and corporate tax credit scholarships in Florida. Please note, relating to the wording of the questions, Kirtley stated, "I strongly object to the word 'voucher' in the questions, since it is such a demonized word. It's not even technically correct. The tax credit scholarship isn't a voucher, while Bright Futures and VPK are."

What is the importance of education vouchers and the corporate tax credit program you helped establish?

Many people are stunned to learn that less than 50% of minority children graduate high school in Florida. According the Harvard Civil Rights Project [recently moved to UCLA], if you are a black male in our state, you have a 38% chance of graduating. Prospects for dropouts are bleak: low wages, prison, or even an early death from violent crime. I don't state this to place blame on anyone, and in fact the public schools are making great progress in this area. The challenges facing those trying to educate low-income children in Florida are almost incomprehensible: children come from dangerous neighborhoods, there are gangs and other negative influences. Families come from numerous countries and often English isn't spoken at home. Over 100 languages are spoken in the Dade public schools! If there is one thing that can be said of low-income children in Florida, it's that their situations are not uniform. 

Some children are just not going to thrive in their assigned public school. That doesn't mean that school is a failure. It just means it's not working for that child. I'm a graduate of Fort Lauderdale High School, and I couldn't have been better prepared. But I personally saw kids who dropped out because my school wasn't right for them. Sometimes parents need choices of schools to find one that will work. All parents in Florida have school choice—unless they can't afford it. If you have enough money, you can move to a neighborhood with a public school that fits your kid. Or you can pay for tuition to a private school that works for them. Only those without the means to move or pay tuition have no choices.

The old model of education, where we assign kids to schools based just on their zip codes, needs to change--and it is. Public schools systems in Florida are doing a good job of creating new delivery models: open enrollment, magnets, career academies, charter schools and virtual schools. But sometimes even one of those won't work for a child. They might need the environment offered by a school not within that system. Or those public options may not be available near them.

The tax credit scholarship program is just a way to give low income parents power they never had. It doesn't tell them where to send their kids. It serves less than one percent of the kids in the public schools. But if your kid is in that fraction, it's the most important thing in your life. In December we had an event in Miami where a young woman spoke, Melody Cherflis. In eighth grade she had less than a 1.0 grade point and was going to drop out. She is the first to say it wasn't her school's fault. She got the scholarship, found the right school, and now she's in college. If not for the scholarship she'd be a statistic.

We often hear the argument that the program is a drain on public school funding. How do you respond?

A weekend interview with ...

... Bonnie Lang, president of Kids Come First, Florida chapter. Lang, based in Polk County, makes frequent presentations on internet safety for schools, and also advises law enforcement agencies on the topic. She talked about internet education with reporter Jeff Solochek the day after the Times published a story about how some Pasco middle school students accessed pornography through a MySpace friend of their school resource officer. Check the end for helpful links.

Tell me a little bit about your concerns about the story you saw about Officer Nohejl.

I think the facts were a little bit skewed. What you have to understand is, if we have a MySpace page, we can't control what is posted on a friend's page. It is our responsibility to maintain what is on our page. It is our responsibility to be aware of who we add. But once we add them, we cannot tell when a page has been changed. We cannot tell when something has been added.

So if somebody is going there and looking at these pages, there is no way of knowing what is there?

Once you add someone as a friend, unless you continually check their page every day, you assume that page is going to stay the same.

So what is the value of adding friends who, in this instance, are not students of the school that the page is supposed to be reaching?

What if you have a parent who has a child? What if you have a parent who has a friend who has a child? And that child gets in trouble. They say, "I know where you can turn to. I have a friend on my page." They still have access to that friend.

And so the value of having an officer have a MySpace page is what?

It acts as a deterrent to online predators. Because if you have two children sitting there, and one has a law enforcement official on their page and one does not, who do you think a predator is more likely to contact? A predator is more likely to contact a child who does not have a police officer on their page. You've just added a layer of protection to yourself.

So the school resource officers in doing this are helping kids in their school?

A weekend interview with ...

... Kathryn Bylsma, science department chairwoman at John Long Middle School in Pasco County. Bylsma, who was a microbiologist before becoming a teacher 15 years ago, served on the committee that wrote the state's proposed revisions to the science curriculum standards. She talked with reporter Jeff Solochek about her time on the committee.

How did you get involved with the state standards? There are very few teachers from this area, and some districts have none.

I'm not sure a lot of people knew that this was going to occur. I work for FCAT Explorer. Every year I'm on the content item review, and I asked ... (the) last time we met, 'It's time to revise the standards. When is that going to happen?' So during the course of the summer I sent another letter to ... my contact with FCAT, and she said, 'Well, it's about time. Let me forward your name.' Then (a state coordinator) sent me an e-mail and asked for my resume. So this summer I sent them my resume and the next thing I knew, because of my opportunities with Pasco County, I guess that was what they were looking for.

Tell me about the opportunities you've had.

I write a lot of curriculum for Pasco County. ... I do a lot of workshops in the summer for science. So it's just something I have a passion for.

Why are you so passionate about science?

Science is how things work. It's a very general category. It applies to darn near everything. There doesn't have to be a specific procedure to it. That's what I like about it. But I can explore. And I want my kids to ask questions. How does this work? Or, why does it work this way? That's how I approach science, and we need to encourage kids to do that.

When you saw that you were going to be looking at the standards, what was the part that was most exciting or intriguing about that?

Having taught in elementary school for 11 years, I heard an awful lot of teachers say the standards were written awfully vaguely. And even in our workshops that we facilitate every summer, I heard teachers say, 'I don't know what this means' for them. I really saw this was an opportunity for us to clarify for teachers what it was that students at a developmental level should know and be able to do. That's why I raised my hand. ...

Why do you think they needed to be changed? ... Some people said Florida had F-rated science standards.

The nature of science. We've learned so much since the last time the standards were written about child development, about what is developmentally appropriate for a child to be able to process. So taking that information and applying that to what our standards said to teach this child, is that appropriate? ... I think teachers are going to be absolutely thrilled.

Why then are people focusing on just one standard, the evolution standard?

A weekend interview with ...

... Frances Haithcock, Florida's new K-12 chancellor. Haithcock began her education career in Broward  County, working as a teacher, principal and district-level administrator. She left the state in 2000 to work at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., school system under Eric J. Smith, Florida's new education commissioner. She eventually became interim superintendent in Charlotte, but did not win the permanent job. Afterward, Haithcock took a job at the College Board, again working with Smith, who recently hired her to replace Cheri Yecke as chancellor. Haithcock spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek about her views on Florida's education system and where it needs to go.

I wanted to start out by asking why you decided to come back to Florida to take the chancellor's job.

I just had so many reasons for that, and all of them just seemed to come together. One of the most important I think, to me, reasons was that I spent a great deal of time in Florida, as you know. I was here about 37 years - I kind of grew up in the educational system here. And then I had the opportunity to do some other things that I think added some value as far as education for me was concerned. And then to come back at the state level and work with Eric Smith was something that I just couldn't turn down. I've told many people that, number one, I would have never come to Florida without Eric and I would have never gone with Eric Smith anywhere but Florida. Just those two things came together and it was just a wonderful opportunity to what I call take it to the limit, see if we can't move some stuff that has already had a great start here in Florida.

Let's talk about those things that need to be moving. What are some of the issues that you need to deal with right away?

Well, there's never a lack of opportunities to deal with. We don't have issues here at the state department. We have opportunities. There's always some critical things out there, and one of the things that's most exciting I think I alluded to in that last statement. Florida while I was here, and particularly since I've been gone - I left in 2000 - has made some remarkable progress in education. Because Florida is a very large and complex and complicated state. I think some of the recent data that has just come out has been very impressive about the base line we have to build on here.

With that being said, there are several things I am looking at right now that the commissioner has asked me to kind of address. Most of these things are things that really he has an interest in and the legislators have an interest in. One of them is starting back with the reading program that's been around a long time. We need to have more definition about exactly what needs to be done with the pre-k through 3 students. You know, the accountability system really doesn't kick in until the third grade. And we're seeing some really good results from some of the programs we have there. But the accountability is not tight enough for us to do good data analysis of some of the stuff that is going on in pre-k on through 3. So we are going to continue to look at that. As I said, that is an old conversation, but there is nothing in the world that is more important than reading in the elementary school in order for us to be able to say "We solved this, we have it down and all of our children have the ability to read at that higher level."

A weekend interview with ...

... Cheri Yecke, Florida's outgoing K-12 education chancellor. Yecke spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek about her accomplishments, her views on Florida's education reforms, and her plans for the future.

I was surprised to get this press release in the middle of an afternoon while you're gone saying that you're gone.

(Laughs) Well, this has been in the works for some time. It was like late summer when I started to work on Plan A and Plan B. Plan A was I would apply for commissioner, do the interviews, etc. Plan B was, if that didn't happen, then what would I do?

I've got two universities, and I can't give you their names ... Two universities are interested in me. I am very interested in moving into a university position. They are both out of state. There are people who know this is going on. In fact, when I sent my Christmas letter out to my family and friends, I told them everything and that this would be happening. So it's just a matter of waiting until the middle of the month (January) and once I make my decision we'll see if DOE will put out another press release with the details. But I'm excited. This has been my goal, that once I finished in Florida I would go on to a university.

I think you know, my husband was in the Marine Corps. For the first 20 years of our marriage I followed him around the country. The joke was that he would follow me around for the second 20 years. That was a joke. We didn't think it was going to happen. But I've worked for five governors. And we have moved in our 34 years of marriage 16 times. I am done with that. ... When we move to this house, take the university position, that's going to be where we retire.

What are you going to teach?

I will be with the college of education, in both cases, teaching education policy and education leadership and, in one instance I'll also be helping to build their program for gifted education. My Ph.D. is in gifted ed.

You said you were done in Florida. I didn't know you were done in Florida. When did you decide you were done in Florida?

My decision was that if I got the commissioner position I would stay here, and if I didn't, that I would move on. Once the board made a decision, I started the wheels rolling on working with both these universities and we'll know something by the middle of the month. ...

Tell me a bit about what you see you've accomplished here. Because it was one of those things where you came in and there was a lot of opportunity. 

A weekend interview with...

... Patricia Levesque, executive director of the Foundation for Florida's Future, a non-profit founded by former governor Jeb Bush to focus on education issues in Florida. Levesque, also a member of the state Taxation and Budget Reform Commission, talked about two of the measures she's promoting for voters to consider - one relating to private use of public money and one regarding education vouchers.

My interest is in your effort to try and do something about vouchers within the realm of the constitution. I read an article in the Palm Beach Post ... and wanted you to be able to explain a little bit about what you're trying to accomplish.

First, I've only submitted the one amendment, Constitutional Proposal 20. The amendment that I've submitted really is not a voucher amendment. ... I am still working on a voucher amendment. I'm still trying to formulate the language. ... The amendment that I did submit is important to me because it impacts all kinds of programs in the state. It impacts foster care programs, social service programs, juvenile justice programs, educational programs also. But much broader, it impacts Bright Futures scholarships and need-based financial aid and things like that.

Many, many years ago this individual named James Blaine tried to get an amendment into the federal constitution. It was really a discriminatory provision. It was discriminatory against Catholics. And when he didn't have success at the federal level, he started going state by state. My desire as a member of the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission, we're charged with looking at policies over a 20-year horizon. What are the needs of the state? What are the taxing policies that need to fund those needs? What are other provisions that impact state and local spending that would prohibit or limit the Legislature or local governments in dealing with the needs of the state?

And so there is a provision in our constitution, in Article I, Section 3, that truly will have an impact on the future. It will have an impact in that its