Florida's Equal Opportunity in Education Act Passes Full House

Florida’s Equal Opportunity in Education Act by Representative Tom Grady (R-Naples), passed the full House on its third reading yesterday and is now headed to the Senate for consideration.  CS/CS/HB 991 focuses on the achievement of every student in our state’s schools, thus ensuring an equal opportunity for a quality education.
“The House took an important step toward making sure that Florida’s school system is working for every single student in the state,” said Representative Grady.  “This legislation is intended to hold all schools accountable for improving each students’ academic achievement in areas where they are currently failing.  It shifts the focus from the school to the students.”
“Now more than ever we need our education system to be able to competitively challenge students across the State of Florida,” said Representative Grady.  “I strongly encourage my colleagues in the Senate to vote in favor of this good bill that will move Florida’s school accountability to the next level by examining the performance of all students at the individual level instead of looking only at school-wide performance.”
CS/CS/HB 991, known as “Florida’s Equal Opportunity in Education Act,” will require all public schools in Florida to focus on individual student achievement.  Under current school accountability systems, schools are categorized based on average performance across all students.  House Bill 991 will allow the Department of Education to examine the performance of individual students and provide assistance if a school is not doing well at educating particular groups of students.  This will help ensure that no children are allowed to fall behind, even at schools that generally perform well.
Similar legislation in the Senate, CS/SB 1682 by the Senate Education Pre-K-12 Appropriations Committee and Senator Stephen Wise (R-Jacksonville), recently passed all of its committee of reference and is set to be heard on the Senate floor.
Representative Grady represents District 76, which includes West and Southwest Collier County.  He is a licensed attorney who was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2008.  Prior to his election, Representative Grady was appointed to the transition teams of Attorney General Bill McCollum and Governor Charlie Crist, as well as having served as a public member of the Securities Industry Conference on Arbitration from 1995-2002.

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Posted by admin on Apr 27 2009. Filed under Families, Schools, Tallahassee. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry