The Lee County School board acted strongly and rightly in response to the very sad and quite maddening story we reported last month about the teacher who was told not to teach anything about 9-11 to his students because it took too much time for Common Core related test prep.According to Fox 4 News, Don Armstrong offered a resolution to require at least ten minutes of discussion and teaching on 9-11 on the anniversary of the event every year. He said in an interview: "It's important for these students more than anything. These students have a right to know what's going on on the anniversary of 9/11," Armstrong said.And his motion is getting national attention: he's been asked to speak on Fox and Friends in the next week."I'm honored to bring something like this forward at the school board meeting, to get it passed, to hit national, to honor our veterans, our police, our firefighters," Armstrong told Four in Your Corner's Lisa Greenberg.
The resolution passed unanimously. Kudos to Mr. Armstrong and the board. Read more
We couldn't agree more with Adam Smith's assessment of Jeb Bush's political fortunes in the Tampa Bay Times' column The Buzz: Loser of the weekJeb Bush. The Lee County School Board voted to opt out of Common Core. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a presidential contender, sued the federal government over Common Core, while Rick Scott is scrambling to distance himself from Common Core and standardized testing. Bush's strength as a presidential candidate looks much more dubious today than a few months ago, amid widespread backlash against education accountability policies closely associated with him.
In addition, even though, despite the opponents running valiant, but underfunded campaigns (Thanks to Jorge Bonilla, Michael Dreikorn, and those that ran an anti-Common Core platform in CD 26); some of Mr. Bush's preferred candidates did win, there are at least two legislative candidates and a veritable army of school board candidates who won or advanced to the general election on an anti-Common Core or anti-high stakes testing platform. They are ready to do what Lee County did, even though bullying tactics from Tallahassee may reverse that on Tuesday. Here is just a partial list (please let us know who we are missing) with more to come:
Florida House of Representatives:
District 74 - Julio GonzalezDistrict 31- Jennifer Sullivan
School Board
Alachua County
District 3 - Gunner Paulson (won & opposes high stakes testing)District 5 - Rob Hyatt (won & opposes Common Core completely)
Collier County
District 1 - Kelly Lichter (won & opposes Common Core completely)District 3 - Erika Donalds (advanced & opposes Common Core completely)
Flagler County
District 2 - Janet McDonald (advanced and opposes Common Core completely)
Hillsborough County
District 4 - Terry Kemple (advanced & opposes Common Core completely)District 6 - Dipah Shah (advanced & opposes Common Core completely)< Read more