And when StateImpact Florida asked him what he thinks about a growing conversation to arm public school teachers, he spoke as a former teacher.
“I’m not going to speak as the education commissioner, I’m going to speak as a former science teacher who loved what I did every day teaching science,” Bennett said.
“I didn’t get up in the morning to teach science with ever believing I would need to carry a gun. Okay?
“Now it pains me and it saddens me to think that the society we live in today is so drastically different than it was maybe when I was teaching, but I still hold that value,” he said.
Bennett was the state superintendent in Indiana from 2009-2012 before losing his re-election bid in November. Continue Reading →
Tony Bennett was Superintendent of Public Instruction in Indiana for one term. He lost his re-election bid in November 2012, and was appointed Florida's schools chief by Governor Rick Scott.
Tony Bennett drove from Indiana over the weekend to start his first day as schools chief in Florida today.
Last month the State Board of Education hired Bennett, a Republican who served as Indiana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction for one term.
He lost his re-election bid there after Democrat Glenda Ritz organized a grassroots campaign with help from the teachers union.
Bennett was viewed by some as being too aggressive towards teachers and not showing enough compassion when he pushed new policies, such as merit pay.
StateImpact Florida caught up with Tony Bennett about his plans for education in our state.
Q:Let me first ask you, why did you want to be the Education Commissioner in Florida?
Mrs. Kenton and her kindergarten students discuss a story about a gingerbread man. Under Common Core, the students must be able to show they comprehend what they're reading.
Editor’s note: Reporter Martha Dalton with NPR affiliate WABE-FM in Atlanta contributed to this report.
“The story was about a gingerbread man getting loose in the school.”
Kindergarteners in Katherine Kenton’s class at Tallahassee’s Gilchrist Elementary School are learning to read using the new Common Core standards.
The students have to show they understand what they’re reading.
“The gingerbread man got stuck on the ball.”
“This is where he broke his toe.”
Their teacher says comprehension is the primary focus.
“I added in a gingerbread theme to make it fun for this week and just looked at the standards in designing my lessons and seeing what I needed to focus on,” Kenton said.“I just find that the kids are learning a lot more because I think I’m paying a lot more attention to the details when I look at the standards.”
Almost all of the states have adopted Common Core standards for public schools in English, Language Arts and Math.
The Common Core State Standards will rewrite what students need to know by the time they graduate high school. The standards will mean a new test for Florida students and new curriculum in schools.
In Florida, a high school diploma is not the same thing as a certificate of college readiness.
In 2011 alone, more than 30,000 students learned this the hard way. After graduating from high school or receiving a G.E.D., they went on to community or state colleges in Florida and promptly failed at least one subject on the college placement test.
That didn’t mean they couldn’t go to college, but it did mean they had to take at least one remedial class to improve their basic skills. Those students had to pay college tuition to re-learn material they should have mastered in high school.
The problem is that there is a disconnect between what’s taught at the K-12 level and the skills that students need to succeed in college. That’s been understood for a while. The research arm of the Florida legislature said as much in a report on remedial education back in 2006.
Only recently, however, have state policy makers begun making changes that aim to address the situation. The goal is to strengthen the K-12 system so that fewer students need remediation once they get to college.
Florida's colleges are using computer-based courses to allow students to complete their remedial courses at their own pace. Students can quickly complete the lessons -- or modules -- they understand.
Jamille Cunningham’s primary learning tool in her remedial reading course at St. Petersburg College is a computer program.
When Cunningham, 20, started the course, the program diagnosed her as weak in all but a handful of reading skills. It then directed her to a series of learning modules focused on skills she needed to improve, including reading comprehension and organizing ideas. The program also allowed her to bypass exercises in skills she had proficiency in. Her instructor goes over exercises in class and also follows her progress in the computer modules online.
A high school drop-out who passed her G.E.D. test on the third try, Cunningham has worked hard to complete the learning exercises, games and tests at her own pace. She can move through the material faster than if she were in a traditional remedial class where all students must sit through the same lessons. On her computer screen, she proudly points out the check marks beside more than half of the listed modules, indicating she has now mastered those skills.
“I’m really excited. I like this class,” Cunningham said. “It helps me write papers and to actually think about what I’m saying.”
Sagette Van Embden / Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
Chad Carroll, 36, needed to take remedial math classes when he enrolled in Miami Dade College. He isn’t alone. For Florida college students age 35 and older, 90 percent must take remedial math courses before they can begin college-level studies. “I didn’t accept it at first, but you have to embrace it,” Carroll said of remedial education.
Pepper Harth has always loved music. After high school, she studied voice and acting in New York. Her life took several turns. She married, had three children, divorced and sold real estate in New Jersey. She moved with her children to Seminole, Fla., in 2007. Work was not as plentiful in Florida as she had expected. She got by singing at nightclubs and weddings.
Last year, at 49, the single mom decided she wanted to do something more with her musical talents. Harth applied for federal financial aid and enrolled in the music degree program at St. Petersburg College in Seminole. Now 50, she aspires to use her future degree to practice music therapy in the health care industry.
Harth’s plans were set back, however, when she took the placement test that all Florida students must take before entering community college. She failed the math section. She wasn’t surprised: Math was never an easy subject for Harth in school, and that was more than 30 years ago.
Failing the math section didn’t mean she couldn’t go back to school. But it did mean that she had to take two remedial math courses before she could move on to college-level algebra. Actually, that turned into three semesters of remedial classes — she had to repeat one course.
Because the remedial courses don’t count for credit toward her music degree, Harth’s educational journey will take longer than she expected. It’s increasing her student loan debt — three-hour courses cost in-state residents between $300 and $350 at St. Petersburg College. And it’s costing Florida taxpayers who subsidize higher ed, as well as federal taxpayers who support her Pell Grant.
There are a lot of people in Florida going through what Pepper Harth is going through. Remedial classes in math, reading and writing are seeing a surge of students at Florida’s 28 community and state colleges — schools where all students are welcome as long as they have a high school diploma or G.E.D. From 2004 to 2011, Florida’s remedial education costs for both students and schools ballooned from $118 million to $168 million.
Sagette Van Embden / Florida Center for Investigative Journalism
Wendy Pedroso did well in math classes -- until her first algebra course. Twice as many students at Florida colleges took a remedial math course than took a remedial writing or reading course.
Wendy Pedroso has never liked math, but for most of elementary school and middle school she got B’s in the subject. It wasn’t until ninth grade at Miami Southwest Senior High School, when Pedroso took algebra, that she hit a wall. In particular, she struggled with understanding fractions.
“I kept getting stuck in the same place,” Pedroso, 20, recalled recently. She failed the class, and worried that she’d never get to go to college. Pedroso sought help from tutors, took algebra again over the summer and passed. She went on to graduate from high school in 2011.
Pedroso enrolled at Miami Dade College’s campus in Kendall. Like all of Florida’s community and state colleges, Miami Dade accepts anyone with a high school diploma or G.E.D. But students must take a placement test to assess their basic skills. Pedroso’s struggles with math caught up with her again: She failed the math section of the test.
It meant that she had to take a remedial math class. The course cost Pedroso $300 like any other class at Miami Dade College but did not count as credit toward graduation. Although she could take college-level courses in other subjects, Pedroso couldn’t begin taking college-level courses in math until she passed the remedial course.
Pedroso was embarrassed.
“I thought that it was going to be very hard to get through college,” she said.
Across Florida, remedial classes at community and state colleges are full with students like Pedroso. More than half of the high school graduates who took the college placement test had to take at least one remedial class. And while many of those students struggle with basic reading and writing skills, the subject they’re most unprepared for in college is math.
In the 2010-11 school year, some 125,042 Florida college students needed to take a remedial math class, an investigation by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting and StateImpact Florida has found. That number has been growing for some time, and is more than double the number requiring remedial classes in reading (54,489) or writing (50,906).
English teacher Vallet Tucker teaches 10th grade honors students. She says she's not surprised that more than half the students who took Florida's college placement exam in the 2010-2011 school year failed at least one subject.
Shakira Lockett was a pretty good student in elementary, middle and high school. The Miami-Dade County native says she typically earned As and Bs in English classes.
Math was always something of a struggle for Lockett. Still, she got through her high school exit exam with a passing grade and went on to graduate from Coral Gables Senior High School in 2008.
She went straight to Miami Dade College. Then, something unexpected happened: She flunked the college placement exams in all three subjects – reading, writing and math.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t attend the school; all state and community colleges in Florida have an open-door policy, which means everyone is accepted. But it did mean she had to take remedial courses before she could start college-level work.
“When they told me I had to start a Reading 2 and Reading 3 class, I was like, ‘Serious?’” Lockett said. “Because I’ve always been good at reading.”
Lockett, who is now 22, spent a year-and-a half taking remedial classes before she could start her first college-level class to count toward her degree in mass communication and journalism. The seven extra courses cost her $300 each.
Lockett found having to take remedial classes discouraging.
“It makes you feel dumb,” Lockett said. “And you ask yourself, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’”
Lockett’s experience actually is quite normal in Florida. In 2010-11, 54 percent of students coming out of high school failed at least one subject on the Florida College System’s placement test, according to an investigation by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting and StateImpact Florida.
That meant nearly 30,000 students – high school graduates – had to take at least one remedial course in college.
Sagette Van Embden / Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
Shakira Lockett, 22, spent three semesters taking remedial classes before she began working on college-level courses. Lockett, who attended Miami Dade College’s Wolfson campus in downtown Miami, completed her associate’s degree in mass communications and journalism in May.
Florida’s K-12 public education system has graduated hundreds of thousands of students in the past decade who couldn’t read, write or solve math problems well enough to take some college-level courses.
More than half of high school graduates who took the college placement test in the 2010-2011 school year found out they had to take at least one remedial course in college to boost basic skill. These students couldn’t pass at least one subject on the placement exam used to assess the abilities of incoming students.
Florida’s 28 public community and state colleges are required to accept anyone with a high school diploma or G.E.D.
Students taking remedial classes have a harder time getting through college. They must pay for — and the state must subsidize – these basic-skills courses. They do not receive credit toward graduation for remedial classes, and can’t take courses that do count for credit until their skills improve. The result for these students is a longer path to graduating college.
Many of those students never complete their studies.
The need for remedial education is a nationwide problem. But it’s a significantly worse problem in Florida than elsewhere, despite the state’s reputation as a pioneer in overhauling K-12 education.
Some 54 percent of Florida students who took the state college placement test need remedial work in at least one subject. The national average for first-time students needing remediation is 40 percent.
Demand for remedial courses in Florida has doubled since 2007.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush urged more emphasis on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test results during his two terms in office.
But Bush isn’t mourning the end of the FCAT when a new Common Core State Standards — and tests — fully take effect in the fall of 2014.
Bush says FCAT was never meant to test whether students were ready for college or the job market.
“The Common Core State Standards are higher; they’re fewer; they require more critical thinking skills,” Bush said, “and they will, unfortunately, at the beginning, they will probably show that close to two-thirds of our children are not college and career ready.”
Bush isn’t worried that Common Core hasn’t been field tested, and he trusts experts who say Common Core more closely resembles international standards.
We’ll pull out some highlights throughout the day, but you can listen to the full interview here. Full transcript after the jump and more next week.
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