Anne Geggis
Signing bills that will shake up public education’s status quo, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his supporting cast repeatedly cited the state’s “No. 1 in education” ranking via U.S. News & World Report.
Not a lot of people wanted to report on the honorific, the Governor griped.
“Because, you know, they didn’t like the narrative on that,” DeSantis said. “But the reality is, we were No. 1 on that.”
Really, though, that ranking wasn’t quite apropos to the PreK-12 topics being addressed Tuesday at the bill signing in Miami. When that No. 1 overall education ranking is broken into components, the magazine put the state at No. 14 in PreK-12 education and No. 1 in higher education.
The Governor was there to sign bills limiting School Board terms, ending automatic union deductions from employee paychecks for union dues, broadening paths to teacher certification and restricting students’ social media access during the school day.
Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. also cited the U.S. News & World Report ranking.
“That is thanks to the bold leadership of our education Gov. Ron DeSantis,” Diaz said, prompting applause throughout the room at the True North Classical Academy location serving grades 6-12. “Regardless of what the narrative is, regardless of what they say, this Governor is going to do right … to make sure he’s putting our students first, our teachers first and our parents first.”
The U.S. News report came with an outline of what characteristics were weighted to rank the states in education and none of them mention much about COVID-19 masking and book challenges, both of which the Governor discussed Tuesday in addition to the state’s testing results in the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
For higher education, factors weighted in the magazine’s rankings were two- and four-year graduation rates, debt at graduation, tuition and fees and population with an advanced degree.
For Prek-12 education, factors weighted in the rankings were college readiness as measured by the SAT, the ACT, or both, high school graduation rates, and math and reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
8 comments
PeterH
May 9, 2023 at 3:41 pm
What a whiner! DeSantis is worse than Trump! Such a wimpy victim!
Only Florida and Arizona are forced to stack k-12 classrooms with college dropouts as teachers. Why is that?
Dont Say FLA
May 10, 2023 at 10:27 am
That is because college graduates GTFO of sugary stupid Fleur D’uh and Arid Zona
Dont Say FLA
May 9, 2023 at 4:00 pm
Methodology is a combination of these five factors: 2-Year-College Graduation Rate, 4-Year-College Graduation Rate, Population With Advanced Degree, Debt at Graduation, plus Tuition and Fees. Note that nowhere among this methodology will you find QUALITY of Fleur Duh edumacation. Higher grad rates can be gained by passing everybody. Population with advanced degree is simply correlated to a state’s population of old people. Low Debt, Tuition, and Fees, those all come back to quality. You get what you pay for, meaning lowest quality schools, easiest to get As and Bs and graudate with lowest effort in the country, yielding each grad the lowest gain. Silly Rhonda’s Panties, bragging about a methodology that ranks education with no regard to its quality. LOLOLO, RHONDA!!!!!
Jim
May 10, 2023 at 6:03 am
Sort of echoing “Dont say FLA”: How many high school “graduates” have you met who are barely literate and can’t make simple change for a dollar? As for “higher education,” what does debt at graduation have to do with quality of education? U.S. News & World Report should be ashamed.
Mr. Haney
May 10, 2023 at 6:57 am
Garbage rankings that somebody paid for.
Ocean Joe
May 10, 2023 at 10:00 am
First, the governor has done far more harm than good. Nobody is fooled by the effort to restructure schools to produce conservative voters, which is doomed to fail as long as climate denialism is part of the right wing plan. Denialism of our nation’s flaws and our history is also not going to work.
But the coming ban on phones in schools is fantastic. We should keep in mind the use of cell phones is an addiction, so there will be withdrawal problems.
Dont Say FLA
May 10, 2023 at 10:25 am
Phones will be banned from schools? The plan for school shootings is to make sure kids can’t dial 911 when somebody starts shooting? And, that way, no 911 calls, the media never hears about it? That rings a lot like a Rhon DasPanties and NRA scheme just might.
Jacob Inkelaar
May 10, 2023 at 1:46 pm
I don’t recall a time-frame for the assessment, was it before, during or after his quest for greatness began. It’s an important part of any survey, poll or assessment.
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