CURMUDGUCATION: FL: BEST Standards To Roll Back The Calendar

CURMUDGUCATION: FL: BEST Standards To Roll Back The Calendar

FL: BEST Standards To Roll Back The Calendar

Somewhere Jeb! Bush is drowning his tears in his sarsparilla. His beloved Florida, the state that launched a thousand bad ed reform ideas, has tried to roll back one-- the Common Core./ Governor Ron Desantis  dispatched a task force to drive a stake through the heart of the unbeloved standards and replaced them with B.E.S.T.-- Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking. No, it's not a name whose natural poetry inspires trust.

Ten Selling Points

I haven't ploughed through the entire many-paged actual standards yet. I will. I promise. But for the moment, let's just peruse the state's announcement trumpeting the major Points Of Awesometude, because they are plenty to digest, and they help give an overall impression (spoiler alert:.the impression is that Florida wants to go back several decades in time).  There are two Top Ten lists (one for ELA and one for math), but I'm going to stick to the ELA list. Here are the Top Ten reasons that the new ELA standards are BEST. (Get it? Get used to it, because apparently the plan is to milk that BEST thing until all the swampland in Florida is developed.)

1) Florida-Created. Okay, I think it's cute that Florida thinks they're the best at this sort of thing, but I get that the selling point here is the "created by Florida teachers for Florida students" part. The task force used edcredible to help do thew work, plus listening tours. The committee member listing has so far evaded me, but given the administrations lack of love for actual public school teachers, I have my doubts here.

2) Skills for Lifelong Learning. This is exceptionally vague. Create great thinkers, communicator and researches. Bolder, brighter future! A booklist. "Skills," it should be noted, is a Common Core buzzword. And foundations for struggling readers. We'll get back to that.

3) Embedded civics. Florida is going to lead the nation in establishing civics literacy, including a CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: FL: BEST Standards To Roll Back The Calendar