{"id":4190,"date":"2012-01-12T11:02:57","date_gmt":"2012-01-12T16:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=4190"},"modified":"2012-01-12T11:02:57","modified_gmt":"2012-01-12T16:02:57","slug":"commissioner-schools-need-money-to-maintain-improvement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2012\/01\/12\/commissioner-schools-need-money-to-maintain-improvement\/","title":{"rendered":"Commissioner: Schools Need Money to Maintain Improvement"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_683\"  class=\"wp-caption module image left\" style=\"max-width: 133px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"Florida Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2011\/08\/gerardrobinson.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-683\" title=\"gerardrobinson\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2011\/08\/gerardrobinson.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"133\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Florida Department of Education<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Florida Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Florida&#8217;s falling rank on a nation education survey is evidence lawmakers need to increase school funding, state education officials said Thursday morning.<\/p>\n<p>Florida fell to <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/roundup\/roll-call-high-poverty-schools-lowballed-floridas-education-rank-falls-marion-backs-off-four-day-week\/\">11th from 5th<\/a> on the annual <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edweek.org\/ew\/qc\/index.html\">&#8220;Quality Counts&#8221; rankings<\/a> released by <em>Education Week<\/em> this morning. Florida was ranked lower in both academic achievement and financing in the survey.<\/p>\n<p>Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, has asked the GOP-controlled Legislature to add $1 billion to the school budget this year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know that our educational system has been strained by the economic downturn,\u201d education commissioner Gerard Robinson said in a statement. \u201cThe additional investment in a high-quality education will not show up immediately, but it will be a factor in our success as we move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Florida has cut school spending by more than <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2011\/10\/07\/florida-ranks-sixth-for-k-12-education-cuts\/\">18 percent since the Great Recession began<\/a> in 2008, including $1.3 billion in the current budget year. About 40 percent of <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2012\/01\/11\/a-billion-dollars-doesnt-go-as-far-as-it-used-to-for-florida-education\/\">Scott&#8217;s proposed funding increase<\/a> would simply pay for the rising number of students and replace declining property tax revenues.<\/p>\n<p>Scott has asked lawmakers to cut health care payments to hospitals by $2 billion in order to pay for the additional school money, which has drawn opposition from some lawmakers.<\/p>\n<p>Florida earned praise by rising to 5th in <em>Education Week<\/em>&#8216;s rankings last year, up from 34th in 2007.<\/p>\n<p>Robinson noted Florida earned high marks for accountability and is one of 10 states linking teachers to a student&#8217;s performance. Scott offered only a brief response to the new rankings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFlorida\u2019s education system ranks among the best in the nation, but we still face some challenges.\u00a0 I\u2019m confident we will continue to improve,\u201d Scott said in the statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Florida&#8217;s falling rank on a nation education survey is evidence lawmakers need to increase school funding, state education officials said Thursday morning. Florida fell to 11th from 5th on the annual &#8220;Quality Counts&#8221; rankings released by Education Week this morning. Florida was ranked lower in both academic achievement and financing in the survey. Gov. Rick [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[1105,1036,1049,1069,1041,1027],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4190"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4195,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4190\/revisions\/4195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}