Ohio’s 2015 School District Report Cards Encourage Economic Segregation | janresseger

Ohio’s 2015 School District Report Cards Encourage Economic Segregation | janresseger:

Ohio’s 2015 School District Report Cards Encourage Economic Segregation

What does it mean when somebody gives you a bad grade for who you are?  That is exactly what the new school district report cards in Ohio do.  School achievement tends to correlate with aggregate family income, and metropolitan areas across the nation are quickly resegregating by income.  Research shows there are fewer and fewer mixed income communities and more very poor and very rich ones.  Ohio gives the schools in very rich communities “A” grades; and Ohio gives schools in very poor and in mixed income communities “Ds”and “Fs.”

In his fascinating book, Our Kids, that tracks the impact of growing income inequality on children, Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam poses this question: “Do schools in America today tend to widen the growing gaps between have and have-not kids, do they reduce those gaps, or do they have little effect either way?” (p. 160) Putnam answers his own question by reporting ground breaking research studies released five years ago by Stanford University sociologist Sean Reardon: “In a landmark study, the Stanford sociologist Sean Reardon demonstrated a widening class gap in both math and reading test scores among American kids in recent decades… He summarizes his key finding succinctly: ‘The achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families is roughly 30-40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than among those born twenty-five year earlier.’ … Strikingly, Reardon’s analysis also suggests that schools themselves aren’t creating the opportunity gap: the gap is already large by the time children enter kindergarten and, he reports, does not grow appreciably as children progress through school.” (pp. 160-162)

The Ohio Department of Education released school district report cards and school district summative letter grades—“A-F”—last Thursday based on standardized test scores from 2015.The Plain Dealer reports that among the 20 “A” graded school districts, 8 are white, affluent suburbs of Cleveland; 4 are white, affluent suburbs of Cincinnati; 2 are white, affluent suburbs of Akron; one is a white, affluent suburb of Toledo; and one is a white, affluent suburb of Ohio’s 2015 School District Report Cards Encourage Economic Segregation | janresseger:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Malcolm Jenkins

Eagles' safety Malcolm Jenkins on tonight's team protest

 “Really it’s just to continue to push forward the conversation about social injustice, and that’s a range of things from police brutality to wages and job opportunities, education. There’s just a lot of things systematically that have been set up in this country since its inception that put minorities, especially African Americans, at a disadvantage when you talk about quality of life and actually growing in this country.” -- Washington Post

Pres. Obama

"My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot. Tolerance is on the ballot. Democracy is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Good schools are on the ballot. Ending mass incarceration, that’s on the ballot right now.” -- Speech to Congressional Black Caucus

Leonard Peltier

Leonard Peltier

I call on all my supporters and allies to join the struggle at Standing Rock in the spirit of peaceful spiritual resistance and to work together to protect Unci Maka, Grandmother Earth. -- CounterPunch

Charles Blow

 Trump has claimed that Bill Ayers Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

Schools Matter: Publishing My Email Exchanges with D. Ravitch, Part 2

Schools Matter: Publishing My Email Exchanges with D. Ravitch, Part 2:

Publishing My Email Exchanges with D. Ravitch, Part 2

Since Diane Ravitch has chosen to slime me in her most recent blog post, I have decided to publish some of the dozens of emails that I have exchanged with Ravitch since her highly advertised conversion from neoconservative elitism to neoliberal elitism.  It is important, I think, to read these emails for the facts that Ravitch has ignored in order to depict me the dangerous, misogynistic, and racist bad guy.

Soon after NPE was created, I wrote to Diane in March 2013 to better understand her choice of two NPE board members who had advanced the concept of performance pay for teachers.  NPE board members, Anthony Cody and Renee Moore, had promoted performance pay for teachers as a good idea, while working with crackpot, Barnett Berry, whose neoliberal think tank in North Carolina has provided and promoted a number of bad ideas, e.g., Relay, to NCATE, the Gates Foundation, and other oligarchic groups.

After leaving  Berry’s nest, Cody had since backtracked on the performance pay idea, but Schools Matter: Publishing My Email Exchanges with D. Ravitch, Part 2:

CA Dept of Education Releases New Information to Help Students in Foster Care

California Department of Education Releases New In - Year 2016 (CA Dept of Education):

California Department of Education Releases New Information to Help Students in Foster Care

SACRAMENTO—The California Department of Education (CDE) today released new information about the nearly 70,000 foster youth in the state’s public schools as part of a coordinated effort to assist these vulnerable and academically at-risk students.

California’s groundbreaking Local Control Funding Formula, passed by the California State Legislature in 2013, significantly increased funding for high-needs students including foster youth, English learners, and economically disadvantaged students. School districts also received greater flexibility to meet student needs.

The law requires CDE to collect detailed information about educational results for foster youth annually.

Today’s reports are the first in a series and include the number of students in foster care at the county, district, and school levels. Details of student achievement are based on statewide test results. In the next few months, the CDE will release reports on suspensions and expulsions, graduation rates, and student mobility.

“We know that foster youth face unique challenges,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson. “The California Department of Education is leading new efforts to help improve outcomes for foster youth, but California can and should do more to help these young people succeed on their way to 21st century careers and college.”

The Department is helping two counties—Orange and Shasta—develop model teams of educators to expand foster student services, oversee case management, and monitor student progress. And the CDE collaborates with the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) to share data and let districts know which of their students are foster youth so that they can be better served.

School districts are required to identify how they will use state funding to better serve foster youth in their Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs), which are key tools for establishing goals to improve student outcomes and to align spending decisions with those goals.

Data released today confirm the need to focus attention on these students. For example, foster students scored lower on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress “Smarter Balanced” tests in English language arts/literacy and mathematics. More than three million students took the online tests this year in grades three through eight and grade eleven.

The percentage of foster students achieving at the lower score levels was much higher than the percentage of non-foster students. For English language arts, 3.9 percent of foster students exceeded standards compared to 16.3 percent for non-foster students. For mathematics, 2.5 percent of foster students exceeded standards compared to 14.3 percent for non-foster students.

The percentage of foster students achieving at the lower score levels was significantly higher. For English language arts, 56.2 percent of foster students did not meet standards (compared to 30.5 percent for non-foster students) and for mathematics, 64 percent of foster students did not meet standards (compared to 37.3 percent for non-foster students).

In 2015, the Legislature renamed an existing program the Foster Youth Services Coordinating (FYSC) program and gave CDE responsibility for contracting with two county offices of education to provide technical assistance, increase collaboration, and improve policies and practices for assisting foster students. County offices of education in Shasta County and Orange County are leading these efforts, which the other 56 counties across the state can follow and use to build up their own programs.

The reports can be viewed on DataQuest by selecting “foster” under the Student Demographics heading.

# # # #

Tom Torlakson — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5206, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

 California Department of Education Releases New In - Year 2016 (CA Dept of Education):

New Mexico Is “At It Again” | VAMboozled!

New Mexico Is “At It Again” | VAMboozled!:

New Mexico Is “At It Again”

“A Concerned New Mexico Parent” sent me yet another blog entry for you all to stay apprised of the ongoing “situation” in New Mexico and the continuous escapades of the New Mexico Public Education Department (NMPED). See “A Concerned New Mexico Parent’s” prior posts here, here, and here, but in this one (s)he writes what follows:

Well, the NMPED is at it again.

They just released the teacher evaluation results for the 2015-2016 school year. And, the report and media press releases are a something.

Readers of this blog are familiar with my earlier documentation of the myriad varieties of scoring formulas used by New Mexico to evaluate its teachers. If I recall, I found something like 200 variations in scoring formulas [see his/her prior post on this here with an actual variation count at n=217].

However, a recent article published in the Albuquerque Journal indicates that, now according to the NMPED, “only three types of test scores are [being] used in the calculation: Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers [PARCC], end-of-course exams, and the [state’s new] Istation literacy test.” [Recall from anotherarticle released last January that New Mexico’s Secretary of Education Hanna Skandera is also the head of the governing board for the PARCC test].

Further, the Albuquerque Journal article author reports that the “PED also altered the way it classifies teachers, dropping from 107 options to three. Previously, the system incorporated many combinations of criteria such as a teacher’s years in the classroom and the type of standardized test they administer.”

The new state-wide evaluation plan is also available in more detail here. Although I should also add that there has been no published notification of the radical changes in this plan. It was just simply and quietly posted on NMPED’s public website.

Important to note, though, is that for Group B teachers (all levels), the many variations New Mexico Is “At It Again” | VAMboozled!:

Mental health, suicide and outsourcing. Our kids are at stake. - Lily's Blackboard

Mental health, suicide and outsourcing. Our kids are at stake. - Lily's Blackboard:

Mental health, suicide and outsourcing. Our kids are at stake.

With age comes wisdom, or at least perspective. You learn that disappointment and loss are facts of life. You understand that when it comes to hurt and emotional pain, no feeling, overwhelming as it may be, lasts forever.

But “This too shall pass” is hard enough for many adults to grasp, let alone students without the perspective and life experience to even begin to accept that truth. It’s important that we stay alert to the signs of problems that are too big for our students to handle on their own.

September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, and October 2-8 is Mental Health Awareness Week. 

“Mental health is all too often one of the last things that we pay attention to, even though we know how immensely important it is,” says David Anderson, senior director, ADHD and Behavior Disorders Center, Child Mind Institute.

We don’t want to contemplate it, but suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24. Ninety percent of children and adolescents who die of suicide have an underlying mental health disorder. Many of these—including post-traumatic stress syndrome, anxiety, bipolar disorder and depression—go undiagnosed and, therefore, untreated. That means they receive no therapy, counseling or medication.

As many as 1 in 5 adolescents ages 13 to 18 has a mental health disorder, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. But school districts have cut back on the very people who play an important role in helping these students: counselors, nurses, social workers and psychologists. Counselors on average are responsible for 500 students each; for school nurses and psychologists, it’s 1,100 and 1,400, respectively.

Some districts are resorting to outsourcing these important positions. But outsourcing doesn’t allow for the deep connections that are most helpful when students are in distress.

Most of the students who have mental health disorders, thankfully, will not take their own lives. But of course, there is other fallout. When a young person is struggling with a mental health issue, it’s harder for an educator to reach Mental health, suicide and outsourcing. Our kids are at stake. - Lily's Blackboard:

Will the SAT become Rhode Island’s high school “exit exam”? - Wait What?

Will the SAT become Rhode Island’s high school “exit exam”? - Wait What?:

Will the SAT become Rhode Island’s high school “exit exam”?

Check out the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) website and you’ll see that they proudly declare that;

Rhode Island has implemented a statewide diploma system to ensure access for all middle and high school students to rigorous, high quality, personalized learning opportunities and pathways.

An announcement about the details surrounding the “new diploma system” is expected later this fall, now that the public comment process on the proposed regulations has concluded (Rhode Islanders had until September 15, 2016 to weigh in on the propose changes).

Earlier this month, pro-education reform governor Gina Raimondo, whose husband is part of the education reform and charter school industry, announced that she was “open” to using the unfair, inappropriate and discriminatory SAT testing scheme as a graduate requirement in Rhode Island.

As numerous academic studies have revealed, grade point averages, not standardized test Will the SAT become Rhode Island’s high school “exit exam”? - Wait What?:

Russ on Reading: Stop the Nonsense (Words)

Russ on Reading: Stop the Nonsense (Words):

Stop the Nonsense (Words)

Let's get the main idea of this blog post out of the way early. Nonsense words should not be used for decoding instruction. Period. No how. Not ever.

A while back, I wrote a post that argued that the commonly used early literacy assessment called DIBELs, led to poor literacy instruction because it focused on the bits and pieces of literacy learning rather than looking at the big picture. Paraphrasing literacy luminary, P. David Pearson, I wrote, "the widespread employment of DIBELS has had dire consequences on the actual teaching of reading."

Like many early literacy assessments, DIBELs uses nonsense words to assess student ability to decode. This is a well-validated practice and can provide useful information for diagnostic purposes. But diagnosis is not treatment and nonsense words should never be used for instruction. When a doctor suspects a broken bone, that doctor will often order an X-Ray. If the X-Ray shows a broken bone, the doctor treats the bone with a cast, a wrap or surgery, not with another X-Ray. So it is with nonsense words - they point to a problem, but are not to be used to treat the problem.

Why not?

Because learning to read is an act of communication and communication Russ on Reading: Stop the Nonsense (Words):

The State: ACT scores expose state’s unwillingness to act | the becoming radical

The State: ACT scores expose state’s unwillingness to act | the becoming radical:

The State: ACT scores expose state’s unwillingness to act

ACT scores expose state’s unwillingness to act

[original submission posted below before edits]

Education reform in South Carolina suffers from a tragic lack of imagination: New standards and new tests, but the outcomes remain disappointing.

Now, recently released ACT scores serve as the newest reason to panic. As reported in The State: “The latest scores from the ACT college entrance exam suggest that many of this year’s high school graduates aren’t ready for college-level course work.”

SC’s data are troubling: 14% of test-takers not ready for college and the race gap even more alarming (2% of black students met standard on the four sections of the ACT).

SC also appears to compare poorly to the other 20 states requiring all students to take the ACT—notably Tennessee has a similar poverty rate as SC but a higher average ACT score.

However, I urge caution about interpreting ACT scores from one year of data since SC has recently adopted Common Core standards and tests, dropped Common Core, adopted yet new standards, and then chosen the ACT for annual testing.

Thus, my concerns about shouting that the sky is falling based on the new ACT scores include the following:

• Scores are depressed due to standards shuffling across the state over the past 3-4 years.
• ACT tests, like all standardized tests, remain more strongly correlated with race, social class, and gender than the quality of the schools or teachers.
• One year of data when a new test is adopted is inadequate for drawing hard conclusions.

ACT results are nothing new since SC has a long history of having low, if not the lowest, test scores in the U.S. (notably our residency in the basement of the discredited practice of journalists ranking states by SAT scores), but the most important lesson from this data is that SC has yet to address the equity gap in the lives and education of vulnerable children.

To persist with labels such as the “achievement gap” is to keep our eyes on the outcomes while ignoring the The State: ACT scores expose state’s unwillingness to act | the becoming radical:

InBloom Reborn: Districts join new data sharing partnership | EdSource

Districts join new data sharing partnership | EdSource:

Districts join new data sharing partnership

School districts and charter schools serving 1.7 million students in California will compile, analyze and compare data on student performance beyond what the state collects under a new agreement announced last week.

The additional data will include information on school climate and students’ social emotional skills that the state will not initially measure under the new school accountability system that the State Board of Education adopted this month.

The CORE Data Collaborative marks an expansion of the work of eight large urban districts that make up the California Office to Reform Education, or CORE.

The CORE districts came together three years ago to design their own school performance index under a federal government waiver from the No Child Left Behind Act. That waiver, which gave the districts more flexibility to spend federal dollars for low-income students, has ended. But the districts and new partners say their work will mesh with the state’s new school accountability system.

The new state system will evaluate schools and districts using common metrics, such as student graduation and suspension rates, college and career readiness benchmarks and standardized tests scores. But it also will allow districts to set their own goals for school improvement using different metrics.

The CORE collaborative will branch into areas that the state board may consider including later, such as a measure of middle school students’ readiness for high school and surveys and self-evaluations to measure school climate and students’ sense of their social emotional skills and habits of mind, like perseverance. The CORE districts also have developed their own methodology to predict and compare schools’ academic growth on test scores.

“The network gives our districts better access to information and resources to improve school performance and student outcomes,” David Gordon, Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools, said in a statement when the announcement was made last week.

The founding districts are Los Angeles, Long Beach, Fresno, Santa Ana, San Francisco, Oakland, Garden Grove and Sacramento City. Joining them will be districts in Sacramento and Riverside counties, San Bernardino City Unified, East Side Union High School District and feeder districts in San Jose, Sweetwater Union High School District, Aspire Public Schools, Green Dot Public Schools and the Oxnard school districts. Together their students make up about 30 percent of the state’s K-12 enrollment and will add suburban and rural districts to the mix.Districts join new data sharing partnership | EdSource:

After court threat, Fearless Leader removed Flint's power to sue

After court threat, state of Michigan removed Flint's power to sue:

After court threat, state of Michigan removed Flint's power to sue

LANSING — Days after Flint Mayor Karen Weaver served notice that her city might file a lawsuit against the State of Michigan over the Flint drinking water crisis, the state removed Flint's ability to sue.

Though Flint has not been under a state-appointed emergency manager since April 2015, the state still exerts partial control over the city through a five-member Receivership Transition Advisory Board, whose members are appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder.

The board moved quickly to change the rules under which Flint is governed so that the city cannot file a lawsuit without first getting approval from that state-appointed board.

In other words, Flint cannot sue the state without getting the state to sign off on it first.

► Related: U.S. Senate passes bill with $100 million for Flint

The controversy began March 24, when Flint filed a notice of intent to sue the State of Michigan in the Court of Claims. At the time, Weaver and other city officials said they had no plans to sue the state but had to take the action  to reserve the city's rights, should city leaders later determine a need to sue the state over the lead contamination of Flint's drinking water. Under state court rules, the city had 180 days from the time it became aware of a potential claim to file the notice or it would lose the right to sue in the future, city officials said, and March 24 was the 180th day.

State officials, who at the time were considering $165 million in state aid requests for Flint over the water crisis, on top of about $67 million already approved, were furious about the notice.

House Speaker Kevin Cotter, R-Mt. Pleasant, said "a reckless lawsuit could throw the state budget into disarray and undermine everything we’ve done for the city."

Cotter and  Snyder, through a spokesman, called on Flint to withdraw the notice.

That never happened, but the state quickly and quietly defused any imminent legal threat, using the Receivership Transition Advisory Board that continues to oversee many aspects of Flint city government while the city emerges from emergency management.

► Related: No end in sight for Flint; filter use expected to last rest of year

The board ensures "a smooth transition" to Flint self-government by reviewing "major financial and policy decisions ... to ensure that they maintain fiscal and organizational stability," according to information on the city website.

Anna Heaton, a spokeswoman for Snyder, said the main purpose of the March 31 change was to more fully involve the mayor, the City Council and other top city officials, not just the city administrator, in decisions about initiating and settling litigation.

However, "the (advisory board) resolution also clarified that its approval was required before the settlement or initiation of litigation," Heaton said in an e-mail to the Free Press on Friday.

In a statement issued Sunday, Weaver said she was "disappointed to learn of the timing" of the board's action  "and the overall implications."

Weaver said she hopes that barring Flint from suing without state approval "is a sign of their intent to ensure the City of Flint is indemnified for any and all debts and After court threat, state of Michigan removed Flint's power to sue:

Frederick M. Hess: Neither Clinton nor Trump offer a conservative view of schooling

A Conservative K-12 Agenda: Ideas for the Next President - Education Week:

A Conservative K-12 Agenda: Ideas for the Next President
Neither Clinton nor Trump offer a conservative view of schooling

 After 16 years of relentless Bush-Obama education expansionism, Washington sorely needs principled conservative leadership. Unfortunately, no conservative is running this year. Hillary Clinton is promising to bring the Affordable Care Act to higher education and to extend K-12 down to 4-year-olds, while Donald Trump's clown-car campaign careens between bombastic promises and insult theater.

During his big "education week," Trump forgot about education and wound up in Mexico talking immigration. When he has issued proposals, there's little evidence that they're serious or that he's serious about them. Trump promises to "end" the common core, but it's entirely unclear what that even means. He calls for spending $20 billion a year for school choice, but without saying a word about where the money would come from or how the idea would actually work.

—Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Trump will occasionally utter conservative-sounding phrases, but he's no conservative—he shows no taste for limited government, no respect for federalism, and no faith in local institutions. For instance, Trump promised earlier this year, "I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools, you have to. ... My first day, it gets signed, OK? My first day. There's no more gun-free zones." While conservatives do typically support gun rights, this isn't even remotely a conservative proposal. Actually, it's a lesson in the value of conservative governance.

Given that 4 in 10 Americans think arming teachers would make schools safer, Trump can insist that school safety is too important to leave to the whims of local officials who may put their own interests over what's best for the kids. After all, Trump's stance would be entirely consistent with the Obama administration's "pen and phone" approach to teacher evaluation, Elementary and Secondary Education Act waivers, school discipline, campus sexual assault, supplement-not-supplant, and much else. The logic is always: The federal government has a duty to ensure that local officials and educators are doing what's right for kids.

One problem? Reasonable people can disagree about whether a given policy (like arming teachers) is "right for the kids." Even if the policy has merit, good schools are the product of countless daily decisions made and culture shaped by educators. It's hard to create great schools when teachers are paralyzed by policy.

Moreover, this is a big, diverse nation, and it's almost inevitable that the same idea will help in some places and hurt in others. This is why federal mandates are such a flawed tool of school improvement, and why Clinton's laundry list of new pre-K and higher education mandates is so disconcerting.

"Unfortunately, no conservative is running this year."

Policy is a blunt tool. Federal policy can make states and districts do things, but it can't make them do them well. When doing things is enough, like with mailing Social Security checks or setting noise ordinances, policy can work well. But policy is far less effective when it comes to complex endeavors where how things are done matters more than whetherthey're done. And, in education, where human relationships are key, how things are done is usually what matters.

What's worse, federal policy unspools like a game of telephone. In Washington, the U.S. Department of Education issues guidance. When officials in 50 states read that guidance, they won't all understand it the same way. Those officials then explain it to thousands of district coordinators, who provide direction to school leaders and teachers. By that point, there's a lot of confusion, fear, and half-hearted compliance. Now, multiply that a hundredfold for the deluge of directives that rain down. This kind of bureaucratic malaise isn't anyone's recipe for good schools.

Trump or Clinton might not grasp any of this, but 16 years of Bush-Obama education policy have offered Americans an intensive course of study. The Every Student Succeeds A Conservative K-12 Agenda: Ideas for the Next President - Education Week:

See Who's Been Tapped to Lead Trump's Transition Team for Education

By Andrew Ujifusa on September 19, 2016 7:21 AM

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has picked Williamson M. Evers, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and Gerard Robinson, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, to be on his presidential transition team for education, according to multiple sources.

Evers served as an assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Education from 2007 to 2009, and also was an adviser to former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings in 2007 under President George W. Bush. Robinson served as Florida's education commissioner from 2011 to 2012, and has also served as Virginia's education secretary and as the president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options.

Neither the Trump transition team nor the Trump campaign responded to requests for comment. Both Evers and Robinson referred questions about their positions to the Trump campaign. 

Trump's Growing Interest in Education

The Trump campaign has been creating a decent amount of education-related news recently, after several months in which Trump mostly made only cursory mentions of the topic. On Sept. 8, Trump outlined his plan to create a $20 billion federal school choice program for students in poverty, and also backed merit pay for teachers. And on Sept. 13, he unveiled a suite of child-care policies that include six weeks of paid maternity leave and tax credits for child-care costs, among others. 

Last month, he hired Rob Goad to serve as his education adviser—Goad is a staffer for Rep. Luke Messer, R-Ind., and has worked extensively on K-12 choice issues for the Indiana Republican.

Evers has an extensive background in academic standards. He was appointed by two former California governors, Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, to serve on two separate standards commissions. And he's been a big critic of the Common Core State Standards. In a 2015 op-ed for Education Week, for example, Evers said advocates of the common core were subverting a key aspect of the American civic system: 

The common core's promoters are endeavoring to suppress competitive federalism. The common core's rules and its curriculum guidance are the governing rules of a cartel. The common core's promoters and their federal facilitators wanted a cartel that would override competitive federalism and shut down the curriculum alternatives that federalism would allow.

He's also written about struggling schools, mathematics, and school funding, among other topics. Evers has served on a county board of education in California, where he's also been on the board of directors for a charter school. Trump has consistently opposed the common core. 

Robinson resigned as the Florida chief four years ago after a difficult year in office. He left the job not long after a controversy surrounding a precipitous drop in proficiency rates on the state writing exam—the state board responded by lowering the pass score on the test. Some also criticized the state education department's handling of Florida's A-F accountability system on Robinson's watch, and how he handled English-language learners with respect to A-F school grades. 

At AEI, Robinson focuses on school choice, regulatory issues, and the role of for-profit institutions in education, among other topics. In an August op-ed for U.S. News and World Report, Robinson argued for a new set of priorities to drive education, including entrepreneurship:

Entrepreneurship is the antithesis of the bureaucratic model that has been a hallmark of the "one best system" for more than 100 years. The time is ripe for more entrepreneurial ways to deliver teaching and learning in pre-K-20 education. This endeavor, however, requires a herculean shift in values. An entrepreneurial approach sees a problem as an opportunity; a bureaucratic approach sees an opportunity as a problem. 

Photo: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H, last June. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)  http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2016/09/donald_trump_presidential_transition_team_education.html