Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett said he will recommend changes to the state’s A through F school grading system by the end of the week. Bennett met with school superintendents and researchers Monday to gather concerns and suggestions about the school grading system. Superintendents said they were concerned state requirements had changed too quickly the […]

Education Commissioner Tony Bennett is responding like a disappointed dad to news that Florida students did a little bit better on their standardized tests this year, but not as well as he would have liked. The Florida Department of Education released results in FCAT 2.0 and End-of-Course (EOC) assessments today. They show across-the-board improvement on EOC assessments, […]

Education Commissioner Tony Bennett is talking about today’s Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) results. The Florida Department of Education (DOE) released results from 3rd grade Reading and Mathematics assessments as well as FCAT 2.0 Writing for grades 4, 8 and 10. “While we have relatively static third grade reading and math scores, we think the writing […]

Education Commissioner Tony Bennett is a lightning rod for criticism — and he knows it. He had his share of critics in Indiana, where he lost his reelection as state superintendent last November. “We couldn’t overcome the rhetoric of the teachers unions and the undercurrent that they generated,” Bennett told The Huffington Post a day after […]

Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett says state leaders and lawmakers are listening to teacher concerns about evaluations. The Florida Education Association is suing Bennett, the Department of Education, and a few school districts over teacher evaluations. The union believes a 2011 law requiring teacher evaluations violates the equal protection and due process rights of school […]

Update: The headline of this post has been changed for clarity. Despite Florida handling the money for one of two new exams tied to new education standards, Education Commissioner Tony Bennett said the state is not committed to adopting the test. Florida is one of 21 states and the District of Columbia which has joined […]

Incoming Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett used to be a teacher himself. 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 […]

The national Republican fight over Common Core math and language arts standards is over, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others supporting the standards have lost. That’s the conclusion of Vox writer Libby Nelson, based on a new Pew Research Center poll from last week. Pew Research Center data […]

Here’s our pick for the biggest education stories of 2013 — a few of which will likely dominate 2014 as well. Tony Bennett’s Resignation Bennett came to Florida in January with a reputation as a rising star among self-proclaimed education reformers and a leading voice for the Common Core English, literacy and math standards fully […]

Editor’s note: This post was authored by Sarah Carr and Sarah Butrymowicz for The Hechinger Report. MIAMI—The pushback against the testing component of Common Core here has endangered political support for the controversial national curriculum standards in a linchpin state. But it also has left Florida’s public school teachers in an uncomfortable limbo: Officials expect […]