St. Petersburg Times

By Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler, St. Petersburg Times
ORLANDO, Fla. - Jeb Bush is back. This week, in the center of the state he governed for eight years, Bush ends his 18-month hiatus from Florida public life.

A historic dive in fifth-grade FCAT scores has elementary school principals across Florida questioning the results.

High school administrators ought to have their hands full keeping order on campus. Not at Braden River High School in Manatee County, where school officials have added regulating free speech on the Internet to their domain.

Along Interstate 95 in Jacksonville, the billboard beckons teachers: "Your future is in our classroom," it says. In Texas.

The nation's student loan program is supposed to make higher education a reality for those without the means, but the sordid tales of Roger Wayne Morgan and Joseph A. Pursley show how the program's guaranteed profit and lax oversight can write entrepreneurs a blank check.

Fifteen years ago in North Carolina, Roger Wayne Morgan broke into a movie theater and stole $400 in rolled quarters. Then he moved to Florida, where he stole from a cash register, had the devil tattooed on his shoulder, was charged with armed kidnapping in connection with a botched ecstasy deal, and found work as a bouncer at a club called the Midnight Rodeo.

A vice president for the publishing giant Scholastic Inc. e-mailed Pinellas school superintendent Clayton Wilcox with a proposal to sell the district an online training program.

By Jeb Bush
Unfortunately, in a recent editorial regarding the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission, the St. Petersburg Times employs worn-out diversionary tactics to obfuscate the issues and conceal its true position — the paper's editorial board despises the concept of providing school choice options to low-income students.

Hillsborough's school reform plan has a laudable goal: To get more minority and underprivileged children into college. Starting in the fall, the district will push more students to enroll in college-level Advanced Placement courses.

At one of Florida's largest public schools, students take classes in English literature, Spanish and calculus. They join clubs, enter science fairs and talk one on one with their teachers.

Many of Florida's public schools are being demonized so much so that they are perceived as harming students more than helping them.

Paul Valentine and the other college students in Room 209 don't have a football team to root for. Or a sticky-floored bar across the street that offers Thursday night drink specials. But don't let that fool you.

The Hillsborough County School District should be embarrassed by the mess it made of classes on Good Friday. This was a regular school day, included on the calendar.

Here we go again. Parents are upset with language or a specific word in the books their children are reading at school. This time, as in many other instances nationwide, the offender is the N-word.

In its first year, a teacher performance pay plan has proved so unpopular that 60 of Florida's 67 school districts have walked away from the $147.5-million pot of money.