I taught for a brief while at Seffner Elementary. Never got a negative vibe from it and the kids were great. Mrs. Hester was the other music teacher and she was terrific.
That ship sailed until y'all get a governor w/o a Napolean complex hell bent to destroy education. FL is about the last state good teachers wanna work in.
The kids are not the problem. I don’t know when you were there but they havent been able to keep good teachers for a while. Much had to do with the admin. County just moved them around like checkers.. didn’t fix much if anything. I’m not anti public schools. Many are excellent. Many are not. At all. I’m not saying all private schools are better. Many are. Many are not. To cherry pick the worse of the worse while ignoring the massive issue in Public schools is unfair and intellectually dishonest. ( I’m not saying you did this.. others have). To assume anyone in favor of vouchers to give parents a choice is either on the take ( a thief) or ignorant is also unfair.
We disagree. And I don't agree that schools are operating under a rationalist "approach," which is a fairly antiquated philosophy. Empiricism also had some traction for a while, but let's shift to theory, where education has largely embraced a Constructivist "approach," esp. where educational theorists are well-informed. I'm not familiar with the evolutionary approach you are referencing.
I was there pretty long ago - I think it was 97-98. I was two days at Seffner and three days at Ruskin. Also taught at Roosevelt in south Tampa for a year, but most of my nine years in Hillsborough Co. were at Ruskin. It was a very low-income population filled with at-risk children, but the teachers tended to be very good and the overall education was very good. Collaborated with several teachers at other area schools (Apollo Beach, Gibsonton, Cypress Creek, and Wimauma). Wimauma tended to have the lowest rep, mostly because they had the neediest students. All other schools had great music programs and appeared to be good schools. My overall experience teaching in Hillsborough was very positive and my experience teaching in Gainesville was fantastic. The Gainesville school I taught at (Lawton Chiles Elem) was filled with rock star teachers, as most were UF grads. I taught with exactly one UF grad who wasn't very good; the rest were exceptional educators.
Sorry I think I didn’t explain myself well. I wasn’t referring to learning theories, but instead overall school design. Let’s say that I gave you a large grant to build a brand new school however you liked. Given your extensive knowledge on the subject, I think it’s quite likely that this would be a great school. But a great school compared to what? To this end, let’s add that I also give grants to 99 other educators, so we will have 100 total schools that will be run using diverse approaches. I would now say the odds would be low that your school would rank #1 by whatever metric we use. Again, I think your school would be great, but with so many contestants, it’s simply more probable that the very top school would come from the field. Now let’s use our top performing schools as models to design our next generation of schools. Then we run a new competition with these schools and other new entrants. And we keep doing this over and over. Using this approach, it seems quite unlikely that our average school quality wouldn’t rise over the generations. Note that each school would be employing a “rational” approach per my parlance, as they would be purposely selecting the institutional practices that they have determined to be the best available. But I think the entire experimental approach is not rightly categorized as rational, since there would be so much inter-school variation and success would only be assessed post hoc. This is the kind of variation / failure model that I think leads to the best outcomes in the long run.
Thanks. You lose me a bit in the last paragraph. Are you referring to the rational/experimental approaches synonymously? Earlier you referred to an evolutionary approach, but I don't see you referring to that here. At any rate, what you describe is mostly top-down thinking. Where do the students factor in to these approaches, in terms of inputs (and not merely outputs, i.e. testing results)?
People forget that “grading” schools pushed some good teachers out of at risk schools. Teachers are self interested, too. When your paycheck is dependent on a student’s test score this is what you get.
1,495 private schools in the State of Florida that accept vouchers ARE NOT accredited, representing about 70% of private schools accepting vouchers.
I just don't understand how the state can be so slipshod regarding private education. No rules, no regulations, no accreditation...who gets a deal like that? It's a gilt-edged, calligraphic invitation to waste, fraud and abuse. Meanwhile, public schools are heavily scrutinized at every level, and have to account for all expenditures, right down to the paperclips.
Yes sorry, my “variation / elimination” experiment is my description of the evolutionary approach, where different random mutants compete against one another and the winners reproduce. I’m contrasting this to a rational committee approach, where a group of experts get together to think critically to determine the single best approach in school design. Your question about students is a good one. I think they would be represented in at least two areas here: 1) In this “metric” that I entirely glossed over. How are we measuring student success? 2) Within the schools themselves, I’d imagine we’d see variation in the roles students would play. Some would probably be rather top down, but others I’d imagine would be fairly bottom up in their approach. Basically, I am interested in the question of, if there are ways to improve schools, how do we find these ways? I think trying a bunch of variations is our best, though perhaps not most fair, path toward that end.
I have a friend with a phd from UF but undergrad from brown. He is a trust fund kid but is better when he works. Hasn’t worked in maybe five years but is working now at a state college. He is working because people with options are fleeing the state. We need to get rid of the idiots as soon as possible before we damage our higher education irreparably.
I agree. If only Florida could stop the 100s of Thousands of people fleeing blue states to move to Florida every year we could have a fighting chance of keeping the 17 leftist teachers who are upset for being interfered with in their mission. What do you think…maybe put up a gate on I-75?
Interested in Florida school vouchers? Here’s what to know (clickorlando.com) The vouchers provide students K-12 with a scholarship worth an average of $7,700 to attend a private school better suited to their academic needs. The funds can be used for tuition along with other related expenses, including books, testing and registration. Likewise, the vouchers can be used to give K-12 students the option to attend another public school that is a better fit than the one to which they’ve originally been assigned. Students who meet the income requirements are able to receive at least $750 to pay for transportation. Additionally, scholarship funds can be used to put children into private schools or homeschool them. There are vouchers for students with unique abilities, students impacted by bullying and the general population of students, too. The law gives priority to students from households that have incomes under 185% of the federal poverty line, and it provides second priority to households with incomes at or under 400% of the poverty line. Most private schools cost a lot more than $7700 a year, that's probably closer to a half years tuition for most private schools at least here in Alachua County. And the $750 a year for transportation isn't much. I doubt there's a lot of big screen TV's and disney tickets being bought but the comment did serve its purpose in getting all you riled up
