{"id":1778,"date":"2012-12-13T13:28:29","date_gmt":"2012-12-13T17:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=1778"},"modified":"2012-12-13T13:28:29","modified_gmt":"2012-12-13T17:28:29","slug":"new-education-commissioner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1778","title":{"rendered":"New Education Commissioner"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new Florida Education Commissioner has been selected<\/a>: Tony Bennett. Mr. Bennett started his career in education as a coach and a biology teacher before moving up the career ladder. From our perspective, that’s a good thing. The man should value science education.<\/p>\n

However, now that he’s all but hired, I need to refer you folks back to a post I wrote last month that highlighted a couple of worrying items<\/a> from Bennett’s past. He agreed to be a featured speaker at a creationist event, but then canceled his appearance after claiming he had not known what the event was about when he was first invited. In a separate incident, he was asked about private schools getting voucher money, specifically if he has any worries about what might be taught in the science classroom:<\/p>\n

When asked by a member of the audience what Bennett thought about using tax dollars to send children to schools that do not teach evolution and use an ideological standpoint to teach history, Bennett said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Honestly, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m agnostic about the type of schools our children attend.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clearly, some people are happy with the selection of Bennett for the Commissioner job and others are upset. Personally, I’m leaning toward the “upset” end of the spectrum because of his strong advocacy for vouchers coupled with an apparent nonchalant attitude toward what that voucher money could potentially pay for. That’s especially important because we already know what is being taught<\/a> in some of those private schools.<\/p>\n

How important is a good science education to this former biology teacher? I guess it’s just a matter of time until we find out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new Florida Education Commissioner has been selected: Tony Bennett. Mr. Bennett started his career in education as a coach and a biology teacher before moving up the career ladder. From our perspective, that’s a good thing. The man should … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-sG","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1734,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1734","url_meta":{"origin":1778,"position":0},"title":"Bennett’s background","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"November 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been some buzz about Indiana\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s outgoing state superintendent Tony Bennett being recruited to make a move to the Sunshine State for a job as our education commissioner (see here and here). It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still just conjecture at this point, but why not highlight a thing or two from his past\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1734#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1940,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1940","url_meta":{"origin":1778,"position":1},"title":"All sorts of interesting news today","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"August 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Science standards, opposition to evolution in Kentucky, Florida's uncertain science standards future, and Bennett's resignation. All wrapped up in one brief story. Gotta love it. In Florida, where state officials have previously signaled strong interest in adopting the standards (though it's not a lead state), the verdict is out. For\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1824,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1824","url_meta":{"origin":1778,"position":2},"title":"Keep on pushing …","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Florida Citizens for Science vice president Jonathan Smith keeps up the pressure on our state to put a priority on science education. Will we ever get anywhere? My Word: Science education beyond the back seat The importance of science has been at the forefront of discussions on education. Both Gov.\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1824#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":407,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=407","url_meta":{"origin":1778,"position":3},"title":"Washington County: school board #9 on the anti-evolution train","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 23, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The Washington County school board -- yes, another county in North Florida -- is apparently the latest school board to adopt an anti-evolution resolution. Unfortunately, the school system website doesn't list board meeting agendas anywhere that I could find. I found out about the resolution through one of my regular\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the News"","block_context":{"text":"In the News","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":386,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=386","url_meta":{"origin":1778,"position":4},"title":"Dixie County?","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 13, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The Dixie County Advocate's website is painful to navigate. But if you have the patience, you can venture to the Dec. 20 issue and see a column on page 12 written by Dixie County School Superintendent, Dennis Bennett. The State is in the process of developing and approving changes to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Our Science Standards"","block_context":{"text":"Our Science Standards","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1537,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1537","url_meta":{"origin":1778,"position":5},"title":"Commissioner recommends National Science Standards","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"In a report that Florida Commissioner of Education Gerard Robinson will be presenting (pdf document) to the Florida Board of Education this week, he recommends temporarily patching up our state's wounded science standards and then adopting the National Next Generation Science Standards in 2013-2014. In his own words: To address\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1779,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778\/revisions\/1779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}