Julie DelegalLook out, Florida Orange Juice. Americans soon may be associating Florida with another product — and it appears to cater to Tea Party enthusiasts.
Last month, Gov. Rick Scott called education policymakers to Clearwater to lay the groundwork for a new, Florida-brand standardized test, which is expected to align with the controversial national Common Core standards. Florida’s Department of Education adopted these standards in 2010, and now is facing criticism for doing so from both the left-leaning Badass Teachers consortium and the Tea Party.
Leading the shift to the Common Core standards was former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, whose nonprofit, the Foundation of Florida’s Future, has also worked for their implementation.
A new set of academic standards means a new exam for our students — slated to be ready for the 2014-15 school year. Florida, one of 45 states whose teachers have already begun teaching the Common Core, is also a leader in the group charged with creating the test that measures how well students learn those standards.
The group is called the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), a 19-state consortium that received $186 million in Race to the Top funds to develop the new test.
So why are Florida policymakers, one school year before full implementation of the new test, now balking at PARCC? The idea of shifting away from the PARCC test to a yet-unnamed Florida test emerged in a letter from Senate President Don Gaetz and House Speaker Will Weatherford.
Their letter, sent in July to then-DOE commissioner Tony Bennett, cited too many test days, a slow relay of data back to teachers, technological problems, and other objections.
The letter did not, however, mention the words “Common Core standards.” Instead, the lawmakers referred to its Florida synonym, “Next Generation Sunshine State Standards.”
One week after the Gaetz-Weatherford letter, a petition to reject PARCC appeared on the Gainesville Tea Party’s website. The petition urges people to tell Commissioner Bennett “you agree with President Gaetz and Speaker Weatherford! The Senate President and House Speaker, along with many other legislators, believe that Florida needs a Florida-based test, not a one-size-fits-all test.”
Those who click on the petition are routed to a website about local control for education, hosted by the conservative Americans for Prosperity.
Fast forward to the education summit in Clearwater, where the Tampa Bay Times caught Tea Partiers expressing concerns to BOE Chairman Gary Chartrand about “homosexuality and socialism” being part of a national curriculum.
“There are some people, particularly on the far right, that you know are looking at all the reading lists and if they find something like homosexuality and socialism they’re going to speak out loudly,” Chartrand told the Times. At the summit, Chartrand’s group settled on a proposal to include a statement about aligning curricula with “Florida’s values and culture.”
Watch closely in the coming weeks to see whether Florida — and its leading education reformer, Jeb Bush — jump the PARCC ship altogether and withdraw the state from the group. Look for a new state test, with a new name, which may assuage the Tea Party’s concerns about the Common Core.
And consider the following question: why build a technology infrastructure to match an existing national test when Florida could build its own Jeb-Brand test and the technology to go with it?
Looks like a win-win for both Scott, who doesn’t want to upset the Tea Party, and Bush, who has a national education reform network salivating for his next proposal.
Ironically for the Tea Partiers, a new “Florida test” could become the next go-to educational product for the rest of the nation.
