FLORIDA POLITICS
Since 2002, daily Florida political news and commentary

 

UPDATE: Every morning we review and individually digest Florida political news articles, editorials and punditry. Our sister site, FLA Politics was selected by Campaigns & Elections as one of only ten state blogs in the nation
"every political insider should be reading right now."

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Welcome To Florida Politics

Thanks for visiting. On a semi-daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

For each story, column, article or editorial we deem significant, we post at least the headline and link to the piece; the linked headline always appears in quotes. We quote the headline for two reasons: first, to allow researchers looking for the cited piece to find it (if the link has expired) by searching for the original title/headline via a commercial research service. Second, quotation of the original headline permits readers to appreciate the spin from the original piece, as opposed to our spin.

Not that we don't provide spin; we do, and plenty of it. Our perspective appears in post headlines, the subtitles within the post (in bold), and the excerpts from the linked stories we select to quote; we also occasionally provide other links and commentary about certain stories. While our bias should be immediately apparent to any reader, we nevertheless attempt to link to every article, column or editorial about Florida politics in every major online Florida newspaper.

 

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The Blog for Saturday, April 30, 2005

Privatization Follies

    "Spotty record follows test giver":
    The creator of the FCAT and the nation's largest testing company will take over the scoring of the state's tests for third- through 10th-graders later this year — despite a record of lost and missing scores and incorrectly graded tests in other states.

    Last year in West Virginia, more than half the tests CTB/McGraw-Hill administered to students in one county were destroyed by the company before they were graded. Of 2,096 tests given in Wyoming County, results for 1,070 students were missing. Scores from 12 of Wyoming County's 13 schools were missing or incomplete.

    Also in 2004, Connecticut fined CTB/McGraw-Hill $300,000 — the maximum its contract allowed — after scoring errors delayed test results for six months. It was the first year of Connecticut's $49 million, eight-year contract with the testing giant to develop and score tests for 150,000 students.

    The Florida Department of Education signed an $82 million contract last month with California-based CTB/McGraw-Hill to distribute and grade millions of annual tests in reading, writing, math and science starting in October.
    And the GOoPers want to run government like a business?

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