Florida Media Buries Education Successes Under Tea Party Governor

1.16.2014  

Florida Governor Rick Scott is facing one of the highest-profile races in the country in 2014, with former Republican Governor, Independent Senate candidate and now Democrat gubernatorial hopeful Charlie Crist his likely opposition.

Scott’s main focus during his tenure has been the economy, but Crist is hoping to make the education system an issue and is counting on his veto of controversial education reforms to provide support from Florida’s teachers and parents.

The only problem, then, is those same reforms, signed into law by Scott, appear to be working. But according to an article in an education blog written by a former St. Petersburg Times education reporter, no one knows about it:

Florida public schools rank No. 7 in K-12 achievement this year, which, considering their unfortunate rep, is good news with a pigs-fly twist, right?

And yet, across the state’s newspapers and TV stations, the ranking spawned a total of three short stories, two blog posts and one TV report, averaging less than seven paragraphs each. Florida’s school boards, superintendents, PTAs and teacher unions didn’t acknowledge the news either. Not even a tweet!

I wish it weren’t true, but that pattern has been in place for years. The volume is often cranked when there’s a negative story about Florida ed reforms and/or student performance. But when evidence suggests reforms may be working and/or Florida students are moving up, the amp gets switched off. That’s not healthy for the debate we’re having about our schools and kids

The media’s lack of reporting on the reforms’ success could be coincidental, or at least unintentional. Or, given the often strained relationship between the state media and Tea Party governor, perhaps it isn’t.

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/florida-media-buries-education-successes-under-tea-party-governor