I can see him accelerating his move to cut ties with the College Board. Same thing during the Pandemic. You don't want to know the numbers, stop testing...
The educational benefits of school choice, if they exist, are expected to come from experimentation. The first years should theoretically be marked by increase in variation in school quality, with no expect directionality in over all average quality. If school quality is measurable, this variation should lead to proliferation of high quality schools at the expense of lower quality schools in the long run. If quality isn’t measurable, then it doesn’t matter what we do, because we will never know the results anyway.
If we try lots of different things, student achievement will move lots of different ways. Over time we will do more of what works and less of what doesn't. The theory is good. But we've found the things that work in a school setting- more time in school for students, more parental involvement at school, much smaller class size (<17). Now we should be focused on applying those things that work across all schools. 60-80% of variation in student achievement (varies by age and subject) is associated with factors outside the schools. Things like SES, gender, race, intelligence, family structure, books in the home, all that kind of stuff. about the same percentage of what is left (generally closer to the 80% side, but sometimes as low as 60%) is peer effects. Who else is in the school and the classroom. Only about a sixth of student achievement is explained by factors the school can actually control. Something like 3% is associated with the actual teacher. To make real improvements in student achievement, we need to be looking outside the schools. Even in low achieving schools, the teachers are working miracles. Students come in three years behind grade level and leave only a year behind. And the school gets marked as a failure despite doing amazing work.
My DIL is a 4th grade teacher. She is frustrated having to get these voucher kids up to speed when the fake school they went to closes down mid year and she gets them. We just can't make our school system for profit. Blue states rank higher consistently than red, there's a reason for that. Blue states think outside the box and spend more on head start.
no shocker, areas with older, taller buildings subject to actually being held accountable for first time in decades are struggling. if this pulls the average market down, it would be a good buy opportunity as once the pain of the catch up clears and repairs made or new buildings built, the rest of the market will rapidly rebound. Especially the units in close proximity to the new builds. Florida housing crisis escalates in five major cities as sales plummet Fort Lauderdale, a city on Florida's east coast, saw pending sales drop 15.2 percent year over year during a four week period ending on November 10, according to a Redfin analysis. The next worst cities were Miami and West Palm Beach, with yearly declines of about 14 percent each. And rounding out the bottom five were Jacksonville and Tampa, which experienced drawdowns of 9.5 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively. Nationwide, pending sales actually rose 4.7 percent over the same time period.
Another one of DeSantis and the Legislature's idiotic ideas is going swimmingly: Florida colleges cut hundreds of general education courses | firstcoastnews.com A University of North Florida spokesperson told First Coast News, “Prior to the review, UNF offered 112 courses that satisfied general education. Starting in 2025, UNF will offer 45 courses that meet general education requirements. While 67 courses lost their general education attribute, many of these courses are in the university's catalog and will continue to be offered. No faculty positions have been lost due to these changes.” A chart of removed courses at UNF shows both U.S. History to 1877 and US History from 1877 to the Present.
Well, we're no longer doing sex education in Florida. The DeSantis DOE even eliminated the lesson on consent. New Florida sex education curriculum excludes almost all information about sex
new college was just the beginning. now doing the same thing with Univ West Florida DeSantis defends UWF board nominee who criticizes women prioritizing their careers • Florida Phoenix “You can have people get appointed who have flagrant left-wing backgrounds, and that’s just swept under the rug,” DeSantis said. “You never hear legacy media trying to highlight any of that. So I don’t play those games. The proof is going to be in the pudding about what they’re willing to do.” DeSantis also said during the press conference that there would be changes coming to UWF, referring to the institution as highly politicized. The shakeup of the board mirrors the governor’s overhaul two years ago of the board of New College of Florida in Sarasota.
‘He feels empowered’: DeSantis kicks off takeover of second liberal Florida school Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, has engineered a second “hostile takeover” of a liberal-leaning state school, education watchers say, after he installed a number of staunch conservatives to the board of trustees at the University of West Florida (UWF). The move almost exactly mirrors the governor’s 2023 seizure of power at Sarasota’s New College of Florida, in which he ousted the sitting board of the popular liberal arts school and replaced them with hardline cronies in what a national university professor’s union denounced as an “aggressively ideological and politically motivated” move. One of the new UWF appointees is Scott Yenor, a professor of political science at Boise State University exposed by the Guardian last year as the driving force behind an Christian nationalist activist group called Action Idaho, which was accused by civil rights advocates of spreading conspiracy theories online and promoting rightwing extremism and bigotry. Yenor, an avowed anti-feminist, has spoken previously of career-oriented females being “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome”, and has called US universities “citadels of gynecocracy”. About 60% of UWF’s student population of 14,300 is female, and the Pensacola school embraces “the liberal arts tradition as the foundation for educating future generations”, according to its website.
Not sure what all is going on behind the scenes, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Republican lawmakers in Florida defy DeSantis, scrapping his special session and calling their own In a rebuke to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, the GOP-dominated Florida legislature on Monday quickly gaveled out a special session called by the two-term governor to take up a series of proposals to help implement President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. State lawmakers then held their own special session, where they passed other immigration bills and also overrode a DeSantis budget veto, the first time in 15 years the legislature has overturned a Florida governor's veto. It was a dramatic turn of events for DeSantis, who long enjoyed massive influence over the Florida legislature, especially after his nearly 20-point re-election in 2022. But following his unsuccessful 2024 White House bid, the now-lame duck governor doesn't have the same clout over lawmakers that he once enjoyed.
I hope this is coming in DC too. fingers crossed the legislature grows a spine. Desi doesn't ahve all that stimulus money to dole out anymore. AMazing how much one can get done when they are buying votes with stimulus funds
