No, not 100%. At least one has exactly 3 bio patents.
It’s also important to have first hand experience in how profoundly screwed up Florida is when it come to education. Without getting too into politics, it seems to be a state where elected officials have national ambitions. They tend to make “ fixing schools” their crowning achievement. They know they can’t fix proficiency in math or literacy rates, they don’t want to pay teachers more so they can attract better candidates, so they create a non-existing problem or fixate on a hot- button issue to “ solve.”
Schools and education hit people at a visceral level. It’s also that most people believe that because they went to school or have kids in school, the are eminently qualified to weigh in on, and even dictate, policy.
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But don’t read or include “those books!” Right? Isn’t this what the legislation includes?
In our lower level classes the teachers are thankful when they can get their kids to read anything on their own.
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I don’t think the governor deserves much credit, but something is going right in Florida education. I am not familiar with this news channel but assume it is a major broadcast affiliate.
So now I’m really confused. All that instruction about sex and gender that must be stopped by law isn’t interfering with academic achievement?
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Assuming that’s true, there goes your theory that the kids in FL can’t read due to what teachers have been teaching or discussing.
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Meanwhile, my state has the highest NAEP reading scores in the country while Florida is ranked #22. Yet, my state has never needed a “Don’t Say Gay Bill” to get there. What they do have is good pay, local colleges (branded liberal cesspools by DeSantis) producing excellent teachers, a progressive legislature that values education, and a strong union.
DeSantis has actually signed a bill recently to increase spending on literacy. Notice that the Don’t Say Gay Bill is not part of that one. Because it’s all smoke and mirrors. The funding is what will increase reading scores, not marginalizing an already marginalized community. DeSantis needs to show he increased reading scores yet feed into his base that wants it to be about him tackling social issues rather than him increasing funding to schools. Notice he never mentions the funding without mentioning that he’s going to clean up the liberal garbage that is being taught. He needs this to be about social issues and not spending.
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The issue is that politicians take credit for good things that happen during their tenure. In this case, the governor said due to his great education policies to keep schools open, Florida scores are great. Many credit him with this success and are likely to trust his education policies in the future.
No idea if there was much gender discussion in Florida schools during the pandemic. Seemed like most places just tried to make it through the day and focused on the basics. I sincerely doubt, given the crisis most schools were in, that there was much time or interest in gender identity.
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What happened was Covid. Florida schools were open.
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I have never been able to make sense of Florida’s NAEP scores because they do no correlate with any other assessment. Florida also has the biggest drop in scores once kids hot 8th grade. I don’t teach elementary, I don’t really know how to teach someone HOW to read, and I just can’t make enough sense of it to form a valid opinion.
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And the goal posts move again. I’m out of this conversation. It’s feeling repetitive and unproductive. Cheers.
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So were schools in many other states. Florida was not unique in having open schools.
It sounds like your state’s schools are in good shape and people are happy, so I expect the Florida situation has no impact on you or your teaching at all, and won’t in the future. Cheers as well to you.
I doubt much changed in discussion between teachers and students other than Covid and all related things to it would have been added. Puberty was still going on.
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DeSantis has his eye on a much bigger office, so it may very well impact my future. But beyond that, I care about kids, the LGBTQ community and how educators are percieved. So yes, it does effect me.
There were 13 states where schools were required to remain open throughout Covid. It’s not that those schools somehow became “better”, it’s that they were the lowest performing states . So while other states lost ground, their “status quo” moved them up in the rankings.
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I am enjoying reading the teachers’ viewpoints and experiences on this thread.
In 6th grade, our kid’s Principal came into the classroom to explain that their classmate “Jane” would now be going by the name “James”, and gave a talk about some things peripheral to that (probably about understanding and respect for James, but we parents weren’t there to hear all the details.)
We were thrilled that our kid had that experience at school and considered it as valuable a school and life lesson as that week’s math or reading or history lesson. Zero worry about it taking time from something academic, and so thankful to the Principal and the teachers for working to create such a supportive environment for all.
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I have a pretty broad perspective working in multiple schools in multiple states and having children in both public and private schools.
I can say, without a doubt, that talking to students about gender identity, family makeup or anything else they choose to share with you only makes a school better. Other things that make schools great (and unfortunately, found more often in private schools) are teacher happiness and autonomy, a master schedule built on developmental needs rather than FTE’s, good communication with parents, and kids that remain intellectually curious and have outlets to explore their interests.
Don’t Say Gay is a complete red herring.
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It woke me up to the fact, that while discussing the politics, I had never really connected the dots.
In our daughter’s elementary school, one of her good friends was a wonderful boy who loved to dress up, preferred to play with dolls, etc. It was a non-issue and it was accepted.
But at the time, I worried how this might play out in the higher grades, with respect to bullying - and was just super happy and impressed to see how our public school system and their teachers embraced him and other kids throughout the years - making sure all kids understood that all kinds of gender identities do in fact exist, are perfectly normal, regardless of their “percentage”.
I had never thought how different things might be elsewhere in the country, where something “normal but different” becomes a taboo that, by law, teachers must be afraid to touch upon.
So that little commentary by that Florida-schooled Barnard student about the effects of her educational experience and the reaction she got about some classes she enrolled in, introduced a sense of reality (and outside of politics), coming from a first-person account, that I simply hadn’t had before.
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And in my personal situation, all of my children attended single sex schools for their entire K through 12 career and there were no transgender students attending any of them, except one at my youngest’s school. My D was a freshman when a student who first declared herself a lesbian decided that she was transgender and identified as a boy. The question was whether the student could stay at the school because it was an all girls school. It created a huge rift in the student and parent population. Ultimately, the administration decided the student could stay because of lifer status (a student there since kindergarten), and the student had one year left before graduation. There were quite a few parents who disagreed with the decision and pulled their daughters.
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That’s transgender, and, for most parents it’s something new and scary. If you replaced “Gender identity” with “sexuality”, the results would be very different. Give it another decade, and the responses will be different.
In 2003, only 33% of all Americans supported same-sex marriage, and 58% opposed. In 2013 49% supported same sex marriage, and only 44% opposed. As of 2022, 61% of the adults in the USA say that it is good that same-sex marriage is legal.
These things change quickly.
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Which is why some are so fearful I think, esp if they’re older age and have “old dog, new tricks” going on.
It reminds me a lot of desegregation, esp if one watches the old actual videos of what people were saying at the time about it - from swimming pools or beaches to schools.
Now most of us consider segregation unfathomable, even churches that used to be against mixed race marriage, etc.
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