Back To School with High Grades & Drama in Florida – Top 3 Takeaways – August 10th, 2023
- Perspective. Today officially kicks off the 2023-2024 school year for the Palm Beach County school system and several others across the state. At both the state and the local level we do so with effectively the best educational performance our state has ever seen. Whatever metric you choose to look at from standardized testing, to graduation rates, to national comparisons, Florida’s K-12 educational performance has never been in better shape. That’s true in Palm Beach County as well. The performance of Florida’s students on the National Assessment has gone from one of the lowest scores in the country a couple of decades ago to solidly above the national average most recently. Florida’s graduation rate has risen from a stunning low 59.2% rate twenty years ago to a record high (with standardized assessments in place) 87.3% most recently. In Palm Beach County grad rates are even higher with 89% of students graduating. In fact, of the large school districts within the state, none has performed better than Palm Beach County’s. Florida’s overall K-12 education system is currently the 14th best performing in the country according to US News and World Report. That’s the highest ranking in our state’s history. And if recent history is of any indication there’s a good chance, we’ll rank even higher by the end of this school year. If there’s anything Florida’s proven educationally over the past two decades, it’s that we’re consistently improving outcomes in the classroom. That realization provides plenty of reasons to feel optimistic about starting the new school year. Especially with Palm Beach County having become a top performing school district within a now top performing state. But at times that perspective is drowned out by the...
- Drama. I took drama in school. These days I cover dramas that play out about what will or won’t be taught in schools. With Florida’s Parental Rights in Education laws enacted in recent years, there’s been no shortage of drama which has found its way into the collective conversation about what should or shouldn’t be taught in the classroom. Or, new for this year, what bathroom a student (or faculty member) should or shouldn’t be using. While some people choose to be dramatic about this change in potty policy, let’s be real about what’s really changed. Common sense and an understanding of basic biology. Until just a handful of years ago no one would have ever thought it would be acceptable for a biological boy to wander into a biological girl's bathroom. What’s changed isn’t biology. It’s that now we have people who’d rather embrace and exploit a mental health issue, as opposed to addressing it with the very few who suffer from it. Just as biological boys and biological girls have entered corresponding bathrooms for hundreds of years with success, I’m completely confident they can continue to do so with Florida’s new law mandating that they do so in place. And on that note. For hundreds of years biological boys had successfully navigated through grade school without competing in biological girls' sports. Last year we saw that it really was possible for biological boys to continue to not do so as was mandated under Florida law.
- Is it fair to say that if we shouldn’t have boys in girl's locker rooms that we shouldn’t have them in their bathrooms either? It’s not too complicated nor dramatic. And that takes us to pronouns. During the July rules debate pertaining to the new rule regarding the use of pronouns in schools, one advocate for gender fluidity and pronouns said this: Denying pronouns and eliciting fear, making everyone afraid, is not going to give you more cisgender kids. It's going to give you more dead queer kids. Now that’s drama for you. The implication is what, that unless a teacher refers to a biological him as a her at (it’s?) prompting that’s eliciting fear and making everyone afraid? If there’s anything we should be afraid of – it's probably that person’s parenting skills. And again, until the past few years there never would have been a time in which a teacher would have ever even considered to call a biological boy a pronoun corresponding to a girl...and somehow society and the children in question survived. In fact, to the concerns of the parent in question, suicide rates have only risen since some in society began embracing gender fluidity. A recent study found those who’ve come out as transgender have experienced suicide rates that are 3.5 times higher than the broader population – speaking to the aforementioned mental health issues. The fact of the matter is that embracing transgenderism – especially with children who’re often confused about sexuality as part of the maturation process – is probably far more dangerous to the health of those children. And that takes us to Florida’s new African American History curriculum. Now this is an area where I’ve long had concerns about what’s being taught...starting with the name. Why exactly is the course called “African American History” as opposed to “Black History”? Did I miss something along the way? Is there a special section on Elon Musk and Gary Player and the accomplishments of other white African Americans? But of course that’s oddly not what people have taken exception to but rather the newly improved curriculum which includes a section on skills which were learned by slaves which were applied in other aspects of the lives of slaves and former slaves. Do I think it’s necessary? No. Is the curriculum inaccurate? No. As I covered recently, the language used is almost verbatim what PBS’s documentary on Antebellum slavery has used. So why exactly isn’t there even the slightest hint of controversy when PBS teaches it, but there is when the state of Florida does? Any honest person knows the answer to that question. The reaction to Florida’s policy is at times dramatic. Florida’s new education policies are generally anti-dramatic. Here’s to setting aside the drama and focusing on another successful school year. One that also includes, for the first time, universal school choice.