Florida needs a state superintendent

...again. This will make four for Governor Rick Scott in Florida, who brought Tony Bennett in as state superintendent in January. 

Bennett was voted out of his elected position as state superintendent in Indiana last year due to the unpopularity of his "reformiest" policies, from teacher evaluation to the statewide school grading scheme that brought him down.
Associate Press reporter Tom LoBianco broke the story earlier this week that Bennett had altered the Indiana statewide grading system that he brought in for schools when a favored charter school run by a major Bennett campaign donor would have received a C:

...trouble loomed when Indiana's then-grading director, Jon Gubera, first alerted Bennett on Sept. 12 that the Christel House Academy had scored less than an A.
"This will be a HUGE problem for us," Bennett wrote in a Sept. 12, 2012, email to Neal.
Neal fired back a few minutes later, "Oh, crap. We cannot release until this is resolved."
By Sept. 13, Gubera unveiled it was a 2.9, or a "C."
A weeklong behind-the-scenes scramble ensued among Bennett, assistant superintendent Dale Chu, Gubera, Neal and other top staff at the Indiana Department of Education. They examined ways to lift Christel House from a "C'' to an "A," including adjusting the presentation of color charts to make a high "B'' look like an "A'' and changing the grade just for Christel House.

(The AP has posted all of the emails, received through a public documents request, here.)
 Despite tweets from Michelle Rhee, statements from the Fordham Institute, and a general attempt to circle the "reformy" wagons, the damage was done and Bennett resigned Thursday.
I'm just going to interject here and point out that, despite Secretary Duncan's comment, it wasn't the transparency of the grading system that worked here; it's the public document laws and a press that has its eye on the ball. Score one for Mr. LoBianco, but it shouldn't have been necessary for him to request the documents. This never should have happened in the first place.
The new Politico Education blog is asking today what this means for school grading formulas. There's also this connection:

The biggest loser in the @TonyBennett resignation is...@JebBush http://t.co/aNo93M0ZPE via @valeriestrauss
— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) August 2, 2013

I'd also point out that this continues the theme of perceived miracle workers who fix the system when the miracles don't happen.
Education is hard work. There are no shortcuts.

Legal pitfalls of technology use: NSBA

Note that this is directed at school board members, but much of this applies to basically anyone in the public eye or publicly employed
Publishing as we go... 

WPS Goddard documents

Aside from a string of dates and some to/from information (which has some gaps, which suggests that things have been left out), there is literally NOTHING in the Goddard documents from the Worcester Public Schools.
Looking into the state appeal process.

Hmmmm...

Hayes, a vocal critic of Sheffield, is a founding member of the Watchdogs for Ethics in Education, or WEE.
She and other members of WEE have filed several requests for information from the district under the Freedom of Information Act. If Hayes is elected to the board, she doesn’t want to have to continue that practice. Saudargas and board member Jude Makulec have resorted to FOIA requests in recent months to obtain information...

From the Rockford Register Star, Rockford, IL, where the superintendent is  LaVonne Sheffield, yes, Broad class of 2002 and where they not incidentally are having a school board election today that in part has been focused on her tenure there.

And speaking of FOIAs, no, I haven't forgotten ours. I'm reviewing the WPS documents around Goddard, and I'll post on them later this week.

FOIA request update

I received this via email yesterday.
(sorry for the bad link earlier)

FOIA* request

You may have caught that Dianna Biancheria and I are filing (already have filed with WPS) a request for all documents related to Goddard and Belmont under the federal Freedom of Information Act (and MGL Chapter 66, Section 10). They're mostly boilerplate, but you can find the one for the state here, and the one for district here.

*technically, not a FOIA, as it's being filed with a state agency and a local one. Cited here as it's recognizable.