March 28, 2006

HB 1427 dead—long live HB 1427

Well, I testified today in the Florida House PK-12 committee on HB 1427, the Democratic caucus' alternative to Governor Bush's accountability policy. (Update a bit later: The consideration of the bill starts 1 hour, 11 minutes, and 45 seconds into the video, and my testimony starts at 2 hours 21 minutes in.) It was a fascinating process, to see the bill killed. But that was foreordained—the key thing was raising several issues. Unfortunately, the legislative website doesn't include the substitute amendment (also known as a "strike-all" amendment in Florida), which fixed a number of obvious flaws in the bill originally filed. I'll have to find time to explain all of this in more (but not gory) detail, but I'm in the Tallahassee airport, waiting for my flight back to Tampa (where I turn around tomorrow and head out to LA).

My goal in this is to start changing the debate in the state. We'll see over the next year or two how successful today was in that.

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Posted in Education policy on March 28, 2006 6:32 PM |