"Education with Susan Smith" Transcript

ME:
Hi, everyone, welcome to The FloridaProgressives.Com Podcast, Episode One, recorded on April 23, 2014. I'm Mike Eidson. 

This show will give you news and updates via interviews with activists around the state on the issues that you, the people of Florida, care about. First up, education. 

My guest is well-versed in what's happening in the education world. If you are the parent of a child in public school, you're going to want to listen to this one. And stick around for the end of the show. We will have a list of actions you can take to defend your child's right to a quality education. 

Susan Smith is a former teacher and a full-time activist since 2003. She now serves as the president of the Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida. She also has many other responsibilities: 

She serves on the advisory board of Progress Florida and is also a board member of the Tiger Bay Club of Tampa. She is the training resource director for the Democratic Women's Club of Florida and a member of the Florida Democratic Party Legislative committee and the Clubs and Caucuses committee. She is a volunteer with Awake the State, Planned Parenthood, and the parent-led community for education reform in Florida. More on that one in a few minutes.   

Susan Smith, thank you so much for joining me. 

SS:
Thank you for having me today.

ME:
All right. If any listeners out there are already members of the Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida, they just received an email alert yesterday from you about steps they can take to address three important bills that are facing the Florida Legislature right now in the education community. If you're not a member, just a concerned citizen, we'll give you more information about how to join that caucus at the end of the show.

But, Susan, can you tell us more about these three bills that are on your radar right now?

SS:
I sure can. The first one we're concerned about is the voucher expansion bill. It's Senate Bill 1512. It was actually changed in the last couple of days. What happened was: there was a voucher bill for students with disabilities that was going to expand that program, and then there was one for regular voucher expansion. The one for regular voucher expansion was actually dropped from the Senate. Senator Galvano dropped that bill, or withdrew it, and then, two days ago, he added the language from that bill into the one for students with disabilities. So we thought the bill might be gone, the really bad one, but it came back as an amendment on Senate Bill 1512. 

So it was heard yesterday in Appropriations, and then, today, that bill, or anytime in the next couple of days, that bill could go to the full Senate floor. It's already passed in the House, so it's on its way to being signed by the governor if we don't do something to stop it. 

We know Florida voters have turned vouchers down as recently as 2012. We know that they don't want vouchers. Poll after poll around the country shows that Americans don't support sending their public school dollars to private schools, especially private religious schools. And, in Florida, somewhere between 70 and 83 percent, I've seen those numbers, of those voucher dollars go to religious institutions. 

So we're fighting that bill on those grounds, but also on the grounds that we think it puts children, who are already vulnerable children, low-income children, into situations where they don't have certified teachers, the schools aren't being held accountable, and we just question the motives of the people who support this program in a lot of instances -- not the parents, but the people who are pushing for vouchers. 

ME:
Right. They don't have to play by the same rules as other schools in terms of accountability and transparency. It's a huge problem. I really hope that the bill dies because, as you say, the idea that we're already expanding a bad idea... it's horrible. So that will definitely be one to look out for. There are two other ones that are on your radar?

SS:
Well, there's another one and, well, the other one has an amendment, so...

ME:
Oh, okay.

SS:
Well, there are several education bills. One that I did not mention is the textbook bill, the school instructional materials bill. 

ME:
Uh-huh.

SS:
I don't have that number at my fingertips. But...

ME:
Okay.

SS:
...it's on its way to passage, too. It would take away any state oversight of textbook purchases. So what you're going to do is have a battle -- the reason this came about was because it's an effort to fight Common Core, which I oppose, which we can talk about at another time if you want to...

ME:
Sure.

SS:
...but it was also an effort to fight Sharia information or history lessons, I guess, on Sharia law or Muslim law. There was a part of a textbook that had some information on that and people got up in arms so they decided to that each district should be allowed to adopt its own textbooks. 

ME:
Mm-hmm.

SS: 
And we think this would be a tremendous cost for taxpayers and would also tear communities apart. So that one I didn't mention in my alert -- 

ME:
Right.

SS:
-- But the other one I did mention is the school accountability bill. It's House Bill 7117. And this is the new school grading formula that's going to be used. 

Y'know, we've had so much trouble with the school grading system. Parents of Florida public school students have no faith in the school grading system. We've seen it be manipulated because for political reasons, we think. We know that our former Commissioner of Education changed school grades up in Indiana before he came down here. We think the whole system is a fallacy.

ME:
Right.

SS:
Yet high stakes are attached to the school grading system. We would prefer for it to go away totally, however, what we're asking for is a three-year pause until all the new assessment situations have been determined and field-tested.

We've got new tests. The FCAT is having its last hurrah this week...

ME:
Mm-hmm.

SS:
...in Florida public schools, and no longer will it be used. But we've got new assessments coming in through Common Core that were only adopted about a month ago. The test questions are being taken from Utah. They were written by Utah teachers, so Floridians had nothing to do with writing these questions. They have not been field-tested in Florida, yet our schools are only going to have a year to be brought up to speed on these new assessments before they're held accountable to them. 

So we're asking -- just like the School Board Association and, I think, the superintendents, have asked for a three-year pause -- we're asking for the three-year pause on the high stakes being attached to these assessments.

They also, y'know, teacher pay and effectiveness is judged by these assessments. We think that's wrong. And recent studies have shown the value-added model, as it's called, is not a good way to judge effectiveness. It's not valid. It's not reliable. So we want to see all that done away with.

ME:
Right. And now those numbers are attached to every teacher in a public database and so they can look up these numbers, that are not reliable numbers, and it adds more stress to the classroom, really. 

SS:
Uh-huh. It does. So, y'know, that's the other ask. 

ME:
Mm-hmm.

SS:
And then we had one more amendment on that bill that is actually a good amendment in some ways but not so good -- you might have read recent stories about children with severe disabilities being forced to undergo these assessments...

ME:
Yes.

SS:
...in Florida. And there was an amendment attached to this bill that would let those children with severe disabilities opt out. But they have to petition the Commissioner of Education to opt out. And we think that puts an extra burden on these families. We would prefer to see that done at the local level. So we're asking, if this is passed, to at least change the amendment so that those petitions can go to the local school district.

ME:
Yes. I mean, the teachers are being graded by the test scores of these severely disabled children. Even if a severely disabled child doesn't show up, the teacher is still affected, is my understanding, by the grade. The whole system is very strange right now. 

SS:
It's strange, and we had -- there was a video, released by the Florida Education Association, of children, who have to take these assessments...

ME:
Mm-hmm.

SS:
...who are critically blind, I think is the term. These children have no vision at all. Yet they are asked to point to pictures because the assessment, the "alternate assessment" that they're given requires that they have vision, to be able to take it. 

So it's very stressful for the children, it's stressful for the parents, and it puts a burden on these teachers who have the responsibility, even though they have no real control. And the parents don't want to see these teachers punished...

ME:
Yeah.

SS:
...through no fault of their own, that these children are not able to take these assessments.

ME:
I know. It's just cruel and thoughtless to put a child through that.

SS:
Mm-hmm.

ME:
Okay, moving on. Listeners, as you've just heard, Susan is on top of a good four or five major things that the Florida Legislature is considering right now. Moving on past that, what would you say, Susan, when it comes to the actions of the Florida Legislature the past couple of years, what their main motive is, when it comes to Republicans and some Democrats? What do you think their goal is?

Because when you see the measures they're taking with vouchers or the kind-of handouts they give to groups like Teach for America, do you think they prioritize students or, maybe, their business partners?

SS:
No, I think it's pretty obvious they're prioritizing profits over people, over children, in whatever field.

We see it in the retirement system, the Florida Retirement System. I think that bill has reappeared. We know that's a priority of Will Weatherford. They want to divert as many public dollars as possible into the private sector. 

ME:
Mm-hmm.

SS:
And there are some things that just need to be done publicly. It's a cost savings in almost every case. We've privatized our prison system and we've not saved any money by doing it. We've created a worse system.

We've seen our child-related services at many levels privatized and, not to say all private services are bad, they're not...

ME:
Mm-hmm.

SS:
...but there are some things where government can be more effective and more efficient at doing. That doesn't seem to be the motive of these legislators.

ME:
I agree. 

SS:
(inaudible)

ME:
Go ahead, I'm sorry.

SS:
-- Just to see that it works well. They want to prove that government doesn't work. It's what they're doing. And we know that a lot of them are being manipulated by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. 

ME:
And if you don't want government to work, then you get a job in government, it's going to be pretty easy to say "No" or to water down something or completely, y'know, privatize an entire sector or an entire profession, really. 

SS:
Mm-hmm.

ME:
So it's very dire. 

Earlier in my introduction I said, "the parent-led community for education reform in Florida." You're a member of this movement; I've seen other people on Facebook and Twitter that are, as well. Can you describe a few of the groups and organizations within this movement, and some of the victories they've had in the past couple of years?

SS:
Well, our biggest victory in the last couple of years has been twice defeating the parent-trigger bill.

We have many groups across the state and one of the efforts we've made over the past few months is to try to develop a better communications network. 

ME:
Mm-hmm.

SS:
But the groups that I'm working with are: 50th No More, Parents Across Florida (which is part of Parents Across America), Fund Education Now -- which is a group from Orlando. And that group is part of the lawsuit that is actually suing the Legislature over funding. 

Many of these groups were started because Florida was at the bottom of the funding level, always. Florida's schools have always been underfunded. Even when our economy was booming, our schools have been underfunded by as much as a third of the national average. 

When we say that our Legislature has put all this money into education, we're not even back up to the funding levels where we were five years ago. We're not funding our education system the way we should be. And over the past few years, with the budget cuts, we've cut so many valuable, important programs.

Parents have come together. And teachers have come together and are finally speaking out. I think the high-stakes testing is one of the things that's driven parents out. Because they look at what's happening to their children and the stress they're under come testing season, and they understand that schools are not the fun places they used to be. 

ME:
Yes.

SS:
Children aren't excited about school. They don't love school the way they used to, because it's all about the tests, and teaching to the tests. So, parents have finally said enough is enough. 

Many more parents are part of the opt-out movement. That's another group we're working with: Opt-Out Orlando. You can find them on Facebook and try to follow what they're doing. They're giving parents the tools they need to understand how they can opt their children out of standardized testing.  

If enough people say "enough," we can change things.

ME:
That's great. And, by the way, listeners, every group that Susan just mentioned, I will mention again at the end of the show and on Florida Progressives Dot Com. 

SS:
Also, PTA! I left PTA out. They are an important partner in what we're doing.

ME:
Of course. 

You just mentioned funding cutbacks. When I think about that, first I think about the teachers themselves being pulled out of the classroom to go over more and more, y'know, seminars about standardized testing. But, also, P.E. has been cut back, Art, Music, Library time... so I think all of those things contribute to a less fun time at school than, maybe, compared to when you used to be a schoolteacher.  Would you say that's accurate?

SS:
It's completely accurate, from what I hear. I have not been in the classroom for many years now, but I know we used to be able to, kind of, run with a lesson. You have to be ready for that teachable moment with children. 

I've seen the example used, up north, about if it starts snowing outside, when you've got little ones in the classroom, you can develop a whole unit, kind of, on the spot, about snow and about weather. About what it feels like, what it tastes like. All these different things you can do with young children that teachers don't have the flexibility to be able to do. They're not allowed to be creative in their classrooms.

They have to follow pacing guidelines...

ME:
Right.

SS:
...and scripted lessons. They have to follow, literally, scripted lessons, where every word of their mouths is scripted. And that's not the way children learn. Y'know, they're not little vessels where you open up the tops of their heads and just pour things into. 

ME:
Mm-hmm.

SS:
And unfortunately there are a lot of our legislators and even business community members who have never been around children enough or have forgotten what it's like to be with children and to interact with children. So much of the learning process takes place in response to things you could never predict. 

If they knew that about kids, I can't imagine that they're evil enough to be doing what they're doing to our schools. 

ME:
Right. Well, Susan Smith, thank you so much for all the work you do on behalf of Florida schools and thank you for joining me today.

SS:
Thanks for having me, Mike.  

---

And now, Calls to Action and Resources on Education:

If you want to make your voice heard at the Florida Legislature... become a millionaire. If that doesn't work, call, write, and visit your state house representatives and senators and join with other like-minded citizens.    

Voucher Expansion is in an amendment in Senate Bill 1512. 

The textbook bill passed the Senate and is currently up in the House. 

The bill that pushes untested accountability guidelines created just one month ago is House Bill 7117. You can ask for a three-year pause on those and also ask for an amendment on the same bill that would allow parents of severely disabled children to petition on the local level instead of the state level. 

You can find your Senator at http://flsenate.gov/Senators/ and your House Representative at http://myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Representatives/representatives.aspx 

The Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida, which Susan is the president of, can be found at http://www.progressivedemcaucusfl.org/
 
50th No More is at http://www.50thnomore.org/ . That's the numeric five, zero, t, h, no, more, dot org.

Parents Across Florida is at https://www.facebook.com/ParentsAcrossFlorida  


Fund Education Now is at http://www.fundeducationnow.org/ 


Opt Out Orlando is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/OptOutOrlando/

Three of my favorite media resources on education are http://dianeravitch.net/, Valerie Strauss' blog at WashingtonPost.com ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/valerie-strauss ), and State Impact Florida at http://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/ .

Susan Smith is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/stsmith222 and is also on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/stsmith2222 .

FloridaProgressives.com is the home to this podcast series, you can find it on iTunes [forthcoming, but it is available on feeds like RSS] and leave a review there. You can also follow on Twitter [forthcoming] and Facebook, or send me an email at michael.c.eidson@gmail.com . Thanks for listening.