MAY 2017 | SCENE 13 I was six years old when they came to my home and took it away from me. It was my prized gold excellence award that was pinned to my report card showing nothing but A+’s across the yellow card. Good student. Listens attentively. Respectful. Obeys orders. Helps others. Hmmm…interesting way to grade now that I think about it. Scarlet fever had taken over my little body and I missed school for several weeks. “We have to give her pin to another student. She’ll just have to earn it back,” the school ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� probably the best thing that could have happened to me at such an early age. Game on. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Even back then they realized that you shouldn’t give consolation prizes just to make someone feel better and not bruise their ego. There’s nothing wrong with healthy competition. It is good. What’s wrong with working hard to excel and not settling �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� grade experience taught me just that. I know one thing. I never forgot it and it made me a better student. But I digress. In preparing for this issue, which focuses on local educational programs, I was thinking that when I moved to Florida 27 years ago, I used to hear that Florida schools were not that good. I never thought much about it since I have no children. That was a worry for others. But as the years went on, I realized that it should be a concern for everyone. How well we educate our children is vitally important for so many socioeconomic reasons and affects our lives on many levels. A report by the Economic Policy Institute says that income is higher in states where the workforce is well educated and consequently more productive. Workers with better earnings contribute more on many important levels. I began to wonder after 27 years, what do new people coming to our state think about Florida’s quality of education? Well, let’s go to the rankings. Education Week, a national education newspaper (edweek.org), ranks Florida 29th in the nation on education quality giving our great state a grade C. However, the ranking metrics places a large emphasis on private funding levels and not as much as it should on student performance. It seems that in some education ranking reports, more resources for schools do not always correlate with better academic performance, so let’s throw this dismal ranking out. The analysts at Wallet Hub (wallethub.com) compared the school systems in 50 states by “School-System Quality” and “School-System Safety.” Each category was evaluated using 17 metrics and when calculated, Florida ranked #14 in the nation. We like this better, but wouldn’t it be great to be in the top 10? ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� DID YOU KNOW The roots of the modern American Mother’s Day dates back to the 19th century. In the early 1860s, Ann Reeves Jarvis of West Virginia helped start “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs” to teach local women how to properly care for their children. These clubs later became a unifying force in a region of the country still divided over the Civil War. In 1868 Jarvis organized “Mothers’ Friendship Day,” at which mothers gathered with former Union and Confederate soldiers to promote reconciliation. Following her death in 1905, her daughter, Anna Jarvis, conceived of Mother’s Day as a way of honoring the sacrifices mothers made for their children. She obtained financial backing from Philadelphia department store owner John Wanamaker. The first official Mother’s Day celebration was in 1908. from the executive editor “Education is not preparation for life; education itself is life.” – John Dewey
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