When they were picking the superintendent I admittedly had reservations about Vitti. I wasn’t so much concerned with his youth and experience. I thought the right move was to hire an eager up and comer. No what made me wary was his close ties to Gary Chartrand and the privatization movement. Where the super had done some nice things, most suggested over and over by Education Matters, my fears remain.
He has doubled down on Teach for America. He attended a conference where the theme was how do we attract more charter schools. He has stood on several stages with Gary Chartrand and Jeb Bush who have never met a public school they liked and in this last Sunday's Times Union he praised education commissioner Tony Bennett.
Vitti said he’s comfortable with Florida implementing Common Core, in part because he believes the state has the right state education leaders like Commissioner Tony Bennett to usher the move.
A little background about Tony Bennett, despite the fact he was one of Jeb Bush’s chiefs for change and he had amassed a huge war chest the people of Indiana voted him out of office replacing him with a lowly teacher. They were tired of his high stakes testing, blame the teacher, privatize public schools agenda and this is in a state that puts the R in red. But perhaps even more so they didn’t think they had the right leader to usher in the common core move. In fact they aren’t so sure about common core all together.
But hey Vitti likes him right.
The truth is Bennett has been on the job for even less time than Vitti has so I find it hard to believe at this point Bennett is ready to usher in any move, let alone one that will fundamentally change how things are done in Florida.
Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2013-06-15/story/florida-should-continue-its-plans-implement-common-core-
