Curry betrays the parents of public school students

He is talking to parents and they are with him? Most parents send their kids to DCPS schools and at this point most do so by choice.
Curry is deliberately tanking the prospects of DCPS solving some of their economic problems by opposing the sales tax referendum and the thought that he cares about poor and mostly minority children is ludicrous. If he did he would be fighting for the referendum because the vast majority attend DCPS schools and it would make their education better.
Also Lenny it’s not the concept of charter schools that people hate, no, it’s the way Florida does them which rewards for profit schools almost invariably run by large donors that steal resources from public schools in a system that puts a thumb to the scales tilting all advantages to them. You should be ashamed of yourself.
King Vitti and his sidekicks wrecking Detroit
Hi Chris,
I’m currently a teacher in Detroit working under King Vitti with his sidekicks, umm I mean “cabinet” (yes, that is how they are referred as) consisting of Iranetta, Beth, etc.. I have been researching what he has done to Florida teachers and schools for months due to all of the idiotic (understatement) changes made here this past school year.
I have read through your blog which was very informative and helpful to say the very least – thank you! What Vitti did in FL is almost a carbon copy of what he’s implementing here, two different worlds! If you could read posts and comments from our Union FB page, your stomach would cringe. His latest stunt was revamping our calendar for the 2019-2020 school year:
https://www.freep.com/story/ne
The Detroit Federation of Teachers fought the calendar change and won! His public lies to the media that our Union signed off on the calendar – our teachers have no respect or trust in this man. Currently under
intense scrutiny is our “updated” teacher evaluation process (see attachment). We are trying with all of our might to keep our teachers who are all highly effective in my opinion, considering ‘a day teaching in The D’. He has a search and destroy mindset and is on a mission.
Keep in mind we rolled out new curriculum this year, EL Education, a rigorous, brutal program that micro manages a student rather than allow a student to learn and grow at their own pace. More on that one later.
It takes minimally 3 years for a new curriculum to fall into place and begin to show true student achievement. However, in the updated evaluation guide, bias against the teachers is quite obvious, setting us up for failure.
So we have this new curriculum as the cornerstone of our demise which is partnered with the draining tasks of using I-Ready, both owned and created by Curriculum Associates – and questions have been raised by my
Union Brothers and Sisters ‘who is receiving kickbacks and how much?’. I’m sorry but when Vitti claims there are supposed “teams of teachers” who were stakeholders in choosing the new curriculum, the calendar change, and now the updated evaluation – has yet to personally name members of these teams, which we seem to think are figments of his imagination put down on paper.
As we struggle through being evaluated and degraded for working endless and tiring hours, the next kick came in an email to teachers which stated:
All of a sudden, the district is backtracking data and throwing it at teachers with no warning which is going to be factored into THIS year’s evaluation. This email was sent at the end of the day, a holiday weekend on Friday, May 24th 2019! Vitti is destroying the Detroit Public Schools, on EVERY level, with no regard to ALL employees
of the District, not just the teachers. Our students are suffering under his leadership!!
I don’t think it should be lost on anybody that Vitti was the darling of the business community while he was here, the same business community that is preparing for a hostile take over of our schools. Hopefully Vitti won’t have many more opportunities to fail up.
Tallahassee sets schools up to fail and then complains and threatens when they do
Corcoran championed the schools of hope(lessness) charter school bill which gave certain charters financial inducements to move into neighborhoods that had low performing schools, re; didn’t do well on standardized tests. It was so successful that no charters took him up on it. You see charters know what Corcoran wants people to ignore and that is it takes a lot to overcome the debilitating effects of poverty, they know this because charter after charter that went into those neighborhoods failed.
So what does the state do? Well not address poverty that is for sure. Instead they doubled down on tax credits and grants to get charters in the neighborhoods.
Time will tell if more give it a try.
You know what Corcoran and his ilk in Tallahassee didn’t do? They didn’t lighten up on our public schools that’s for sure. Instead they changed the requirements of what can be considered persistently under performing putting even more schools in jeopardy.
They also continued to grossly under fund public ed doing more of a shell game than ever with funding, ultimately giving them 75 dollars more per student or you know about 1000 less than they gave in 2005 all while pumping more money into charters. 600ish get to split 190 million in maintenance costs while 3000ish public schools get to split zero, and forcing districts to share future special referendums or millage increases.
Charter schools, I want to remind you often pick who they take and keep, don’t have have the same building codes and don’t even have to provide many of the services including basics like lunch and transportation that public schools do and Corcoran has the nerve to ask if public schools are afraid of competition?!? %$#& him!
The thing is public schools would love to compete with charters, in Florida however it is to much to ask that it be fair.
The game is rigged in Florida and Corcoran knows it because he helped to rig it.
Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran’s amoral leadership
At the recent State Board of Education, ironically a group also devoid of educators, Corcoran on the job for five months went after a superintendent who started as a teacher who then after two plus decades moved to become the superintendent of Duval County, one of the biggest districts in the nation.
During the meeting where he was both condescending and rude he made several outrageous claims and assertions.
From the Tampa Times:
Duval superintendent Diana Greene told the board that she was committed to working with the state, but that she also had to devise plans acceptable to her community. She laid out a vision for improvements that some on the board called “bold.”
(Board member_ Grady was nonplussed, saying he wanted to see results, and not just receive promises of positivity and collaboration. He signaled a willingness to wait and see.
Corcoran was not so charitable. He blistered Greene for what he called a “travesty of justice” for children who deserve better.
The commissioner repeatedly asked the superintendent why she had not stepped forward to adopt a “Schools of Hope” charter operator, IDEA Academy, as an outside operator for the most struggling schools that Greene said still do not look likely to improve their state grades.
Corcoran championed the “Schools of Hope” program, which eases the path for state-approved charter school providers to open in high-poverty communities, while House speaker.
Duval should “go aggressively in another direction,” Corcoran said, adding, “Are you afraid of the competition?”
Greene, visibly annoyed, pushed back. She said her district had 40 charter schools already, and that the community did not prefer IDEA. She added that she had been in her current job for only 10 months, and had seen enough to know in her professional judgment that the schools can improve without taking the step that Corcoran advocated.
“I have seen what is going on in the school district,” she said. “It has the ability to turn it around.”
https://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/2019/05/22/florida-education-commissioner-suggests-takeover-authority-for-long-struggling-schools/
Um we have a school of hope already in Jacksonville, the KIPP school and to say it was lackluster wouldn’t be an understatement and neither would it be to say it is expensive. This school alone got an extra two million dollars inserted into the state budget because reasons. There is no reason to think the IDEA charter school would do any better.
Then speaking of a travesty of justice, well that pretty much sums up Corcoran’s entire career. As he has meandered from living high on the hog on the republican corporate card to ramming through legislation that personally benefits his family.
Then he while rigging the game time and time again in favor of charter schools has the chutzpah to ask Greene if she is afraid of a little competition. Well the truth is Corcoran and his school choice pals on the state board and elsewhere are afraid of playing a fair game because they know they will loose.
Finally Corcoran gave a preview of next years big bill and that’s one that allows him to decide what schools can be taken over by charters.
From Florida Trend,
“What do you do when you have a district that has 21 schools in D or F and on the verge of constant turnaround? In turnaround, out of turnaround. You’re talking about generations of kids,” the former House speaker explained after the meeting. “At what point do you say, ‘Maybe we should put them in receivership, maybe we should have legislation that allows us to go over there and take over.’”
https://www.floridatrend.com/article/26901/florida-education-commissioner-suggests-takeover-authority-for-long-struggling-schools
At the end of the day Corcoran is as despicable as he is unqualified which is very.
Curry is laying the groundwork to take over our schools.
If Vouchers are so great why do their supporters feel compelled to lie and mislead?
Vouchers, friends aren’t here to save poor kids from failing schools, they are here to provide a religious education and to drain public schools of resources until there isn’t anything left. They are not here to contribute to the common good.
Florida needs a teacher strike and that is the simple truth of it
I imagine several hundred people left Orlando fired up about the future. The things is what’s different from 18, or 16, or 14 when we all pledged to work hard and elect pro education candidates? Nothing is what. We will never change the make up of the legislature and elect enough pro education candidates because the state has been gerrymandered to make sure it won’t happen.
Look at the last election when the state went republican by about a tenth of one percentage point but still republicans sent overwhelming majorities of legislators to Tallahassee. Elections won’t matter but a strike might.
People say we can’t strike. Well have we challenged that in court. Teachers in West Virginia were told they couldn’t strike and they did so twice and won.
People say teachers will lose their jobs. Well teachers are already leaving in droves and could they really fire us all? It’s projected that state wide next year we will already be 10k teachers short.
They say teachers can lose their pensions. Well most teachers today don’t have pensions because now days most teachers don’t make it 8 years to become vested.
I want to be optimistic and hopeful, I do. I am willing to wear red, march, write letters and blogs, and contact legislators until my fingers hurt, like i did this past year and the year before and the year before that, the thing is none of it mattered and I can’t see it matter going forward. The only thing that may work is a strike and the right to strike is what we need to fight for. Any of our leaders telling us different, advocating something different are just spitting in the wind.
All across the nation teachers are striking and wining, while Florida where it is probably worse than anywhere else calls for more of the same. Friends we have to do something while there is still something worth fighting for.
To read more click one of the links:
https://www.axios.com/teacher-strikes-west-virginia-los-angeles-denver-8b494a74-5a99-4294-af8d-da47029414e3.html