FEA President Andy Ford reached out in an open letter/advertisement to parents and state officials in an effort to pursuade the state from submitting its RTTT application until the second round in June.

Ford still has hopes that agreement on a worthy application can be reached.

Read the open letter on orlandosentinel.com.
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_educ...n-letter-ad.pdf

Post a comment on orlandosentinel.com.
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_educ...l-hold-off.html

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An Open Letter to Parents

The fourth grader sits at his desk, gripping a pencil. He stares at the blank paper. His teacher kneels beside him, sees his lower lip tremble.

“Look at me,” she says in a whisper. “It’s okay. Look at me.”

He lifts his eyes, and in a kind but firm voice, barely audible to the classroom of students writing essays, she says, “You can do this. I know you can, and – most important – you know you can. It’s okay.”

In public school classrooms across Florida, teachers are making a difference in students’ lives. In big, and sometimes in very small ways, they are nurturing our children, inspiring and guiding them, teaching them to believe in themselves and challenging them to fulfill their potential.

Do you remember the educator who changed your life?

Teaching is critically important work, and many of the tens of thousands of education professionals the Florida Education Association (FEA) represents can’t imagine doing anything else; it’s our calling.

So when the U.S. Department of Education announced Race to the Top – the nation’s largest competitive education grant program – and called on education stakeholders to work collaboratively to develop proposals, we looked forward to partnering with the Florida Department of Education.

Then last month, Florida Education Commissioner Eric Smith released the content of the Race to the Top Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), a legally binding agreement that state and local education stakeholders must sign if the state is to be eligible to compete in the federal Race to the Top grant program.

The MOU failed to include input from FEA and other education stakeholders, and in an open letter published in the Tallahassee Democrat last month, I urged Commissioner Smith to sit back down at the education reform table. He did, briefly, before summarily rejecting the modifications, and FEA reluctantly advised our local affiliates against signing the agreement.

The Florida MOU is a minefield. The state plan would require all participating school districts to implement new education programs that would be underfunded, even with Race to the Top dollars. Many are untested, but instead of piloting these programs, every school in every participating district would be required to adopt them. The plan requires further standardization, more tests, administered more frequently. And it doesn’t provide funding for existing programs – the ones we know are working.

Perhaps your daughter is excelling in math or your son is reading above grade level because he or she is participating in a research-based school initiative right now. It’s working, but if it’s not part of Florida’s Race to the Top plan, it could easily be cut.

FEA’s decision has prompted stories accusing FEA and our local affiliates of obstructionism. Perhaps you know some of these so-called “obstructionists,” the ones Commissioner Smith claims are jeopardizing our children’s future. Your daughter’s kindergarten teacher may be one of them, but right now, she’s handing out glue sticks, construction paper, and crayons she bought with her own money. Maybe your son’s science teacher is the perpetrator, the one who bought the butterfly garden online when the school budget was cut.

Maybe my fourth grade teacher was the culprit, the one whose simple words of encouragement I remember today and whose voice I still hear sometimes when a job seems insurmountable. She’s the reason I became an elementary school teacher, and the reason I left the classroom to advocate on behalf of teachers like her, the ones dedicated to our children’s success.

That’s the reason Florida’s education leadership – the Florida Department of Education, the Association of District School Superintendents, the Florida School Boards Association, and the FEA – must continue the conversation. The second phase of Race to the Top applications aren’t due until June. We have a professional and a moral obligation to return to the table, and, in the collaborative spirit of the Race to the Top grant, forge an application worthy of our students’ future.

Sincerely,

Andy Ford, President
Florida Education Association

Paid for by the Florida Education Association (FEA).