Steve Wise Sought to Suppress Test Data for a Campaign Contributor
From Leslie Postal in the Orlando Sentinel:
Sen. Steve Wise, R-Jacksonville, is convinced.
Since watching some of Lockavitch’s 30-minute demonstrations , Wise, a veteran legislator and chairman of the Senate’s education committee, has used his influence to insert millions of dollars for Lockavitch’s program into the state budget since 2000. The 2012-13 budget the Legislature just approved includes an additional $750,000 meant for the North Carolina company.
But the program’s central premise — that phonics skills won’t help the “worst-performing” students — runs counter to decades of reading research and to Florida’s blueprint for reading instruction.
More significantly, Florida students who took part in Failure Free Reading last school year did