What is your "sense of the future" as far as educational reform is concerned?

Answer 1

It's going to take an internal revolution, a war, or a natural disaster to deconstruct the educational system, then reconstruct it. We just keep building on and on to a messed up foundation. The weak foundation will crack, and it will all come tumbling down.

Answer 2

Conservative politicians here in Florida are campaigning with the guise of 'Let us continue to lead the nation with the educational reforms of Jeb Bush.'

So what exactly are these reforms?

Politicians have been running around Tallahassee with a book entitled "Monsters Under the Bed"--a conservative agenda for the public schools.

First, they wanted to get vouchers declared legal (remember the time when vouchers were unconstitutional?). Through accountability, teachers and schools were graded. Yes, this is a good idea--but not in this case; here it was used to legitimize vouchers.

Why, you ask, is this so important? Because the planned end result is to privatize schools in Florida; that is, to issue a voucher for every student and get the state out of the education business.

So far this has resulted in a number of new private schools. What little oversight the state provides has shown/uncovered fraud and waste. I am not saying that all private schools do not have the students' interest at heart; but there are a lot of greedy people out to line their own pockets with little concern about the students.

At the least, be open and up-front about it. Look at experiments to privatize schools (I believe Philadelphia has tried this). If Florida continues on its current path, I do not see a bright future for the students of tomorrow.