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Good morning, Senator @KeithPerryFL, and #HappyFathersDay! My name is Ryan and I am a #PublicEd advocate living, learning, and teaching in #HCPS just south of you in the Tampa area. I read your op-ed in the @GainesvilleSun and would like to offer some additional perspective (1)
(2) and perhaps clarify why you are seeing so many negative op-eds about what you and your fellow legislators have wrought over the last 20 years (and especially the last 3-5). I will move through your op-ed paragraph by paragraph in the hopes of sharing additional data / studies
(3) First paragraph: to say that a "claim is completely false" is absurd, because we, the actual educators who are working with our students every single day, must live with the ramifications created by unfundated mandates as well as constant changes and disruptions from testing.
(4) Although you may believe a claim is false, it is based on personal perspective and, as they say, perception shapes reality. Virtually NO legislator in Florida really understands what all this disastrous ed policy has done in terms of the human costs, except maybe @CoachP_CHS
(5) Second paragraph: Um, do you even know Sue Legg as more than a name in the paper? She was a psychometrician who helped design the FCAT back in the day from my understanding, and to say that she "fails to present the full picture of the NAEP." Clearly her experience makes her 
(6) makes her a better diagnostician of data than you, unless of course you also hold a PhD in Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation. And while we're discussing the NAEP that you and your fellow legislators love to tout, you do realize it is a snapshot at best, right?
(7) And you do know said snapshot--which is a random sampling that undoubtedly includes 3rd graders who were retained for an additional year--only measures PROFICIENCY and not GROWTH, correct? Because let me share a much more robust study that NO ONE in the @FLLegislature cited.
(8) Welcome to the "Educational opportunity in early and middle childhood: Variation by place and age" done by Sean Reardon at @Stanford. The research is robust and undeniable (and you think we're uninformed...); here's the link and I hope you read it: cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/…
(9) But if you don't have time to read it, I can sum up the findings for you in two quick pictures. The first one you see is typical snapshot scores from #Florida (Green is good). When we take that picture of the NAEP, the kids look like they're doing well. But when we TRACK kids
(10) But what Stanford did is they actually TRACKED kids--ALL kids--across multiple testing years by using a decade worth of data from over 45 million students in 11,000 districts, guess what happened? We have some of the WORST growth in the entire country (Purple is BAD)
(11) After NAEP when you segue to your touting of rising graduation rates, all that is just data manipulation or, as I call it, "Cooking the Books"; if you read the write up I put on the Teacher Voice blog, I share one of the most salient facts about K-12 teacher-voice.com/2018/01/18/coo…
(12) namely, that a 2016 study from @floridastate's Center for Post Secondary Success tracked students entering college across a number of years and found that, on average, 70% of our K-12 grads entering a two-year community college need remediation in reading, writing, and math
(13) The number slightly dips to roughly 50% when we only look at first time college students attending 4 year univerities. Riddle me this, @KeithPerryFL, how on earth did these students GRADUATE from high school with such massive gaps in their understading? All part of the game.
(14) As far as your self-congratulatory back-patting about funding, sorry, but the damage is done. It's just math. You can't argue numbers. You can't ignore inflation. This "investment" is more empty talk like "record-setting" "historic" +"unprecedented" teacher-voice.com/2018/06/11/num…
(15) $50 million for lower performing schools? There are 67 districts, and considering your won't bring back the cost differential formula that means each district would stand to get ~ $746K. We have 50 such schools, each getting less than $15,000. Yeah. Sure. That'll make a dent
(16) Workforce education. I'll give you a backhanded compliment for that one. Because, let's be honest, had the Florida Legislature been properly funding/keeping up with rising costs perhaps we could have never stripped away vocational education to begin with. Kudos nonetheless.
(17) Access to CS professional development? Yes, let's put more on teachers' plates. How can we offer "essential courses" in computer science when we barely have computers? And the ones we do have that are barebones at best, well their used exclusively for the INSANE TESTING
(18) during the final TWO MONTHS of the school year. Sidenote: my middle bro is VP at Intel; we talk a lot about the future of education. I would NOT steer kids to CS. The job will be replaced by machine learning within two decades tops, perhaps less. It astounds me how much our
(19) legislators lack vision and comprehension for the world we are entering. Although this is not part of the rebuttal I am offering to your column, perhaps you might take a few moments to read this post and reflect for a bit. We need to change our system teacher-voice.com/2018/10/28/the…
(20) Vouchers? Let's not even go there. Completely unconstitutional and unaccountable. Funny how you only want accountability for those in traditional public schools. Finally, I'm glad that you're proud. But those who are working with our kids each and every day, we are in dismay
(21) at the lack of willingness to be heard by our legislators. There are a lot of intelligent, passionate teachers out there with great ideas, but you simply don't care. If you had, things would be better by now. So when will we be invitied to the table to join the discussion?
(22) And if you can't honestly answer that question, I guess I only have one final one. You "claimed" that "individuals who criticize our education system have taken the time to do their homework"; I criticize it openly and frequently, so let me ask: have I done my homework?
P.S. - There are a few typos and funky sentences between tweets. Sorry about that. My mind works faster than my fingers, and I've never built a thread on Twitter before. Now I know what @rbirds12 must feel like after he puts together those monster threads. Enjoy Father's Day, sir
