Kevin Rader: State Representative

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I met Kevin Rader this morning at Palm Beach Bagel in The Reserve (441 and Clint Moore). He was very impressive. I’ve been interviewing candidates for various offices and Rader is probably the most knowledgeable of all of them.
Earlier I met with Joshua Izaak, who is running against Rader in a Democratic primary. Their election is August 26th. We also published an article by Izaak on education policy. There is no Republican candidate and no others we know of.
Ideologically Rader and Izaak are roughly the same – liberal Democrats. The difference comes down to knowledge, experience and realism. Rader has all three on his side. We talked about a number of issues and with a couple of exceptions he knew them in great depth.
Perhaps most important is that Rader understands his role. He’s in the minority in the legislature facing an large Republican majority. In that situation he knows he can’t enact much legislation and can’t outright stop the Republicans if they’re determined. Instead he realizes his tremendous power to ask hard questions. I’ve been in that situation myself on my hometown town board.
Rader also has a deep understanding of insurance issues because he works in that field. He says most of his work is in an unusual niche – beekeeping insurance.
In our earlier interview Izaak criticized a moment Rader had on the House floor. Here it is:

Rader didn’t flinch and he had a better answer for me than he had on the video. The condo association at Century Village asked him to propose the amendment. He explained the finer points of why the amendment would have made things better. It didn’t seem like a huge issue.
What’s important about this is that Izaak accused Rader of being affected by special interests in the insurance industry. That didn’t make a lot of sense as it just changes what the insurers are selling to whom. Rather Rader admits he was influenced by the condo association, which is also a special interest in a sense but not a terribly offensive one by the standards of most people.
Also, in simple terms, I just liked the guy. There are some key issues where we disagree but he was completely honest and didn’t try to please me by softening his positions.
When I asked about guns Rader didn’t hesitate to say he would ban AK-47s, for example. The ensuing conversation showed he knows almost nothing about firearms. He didn’t know that typical hunting rifles are more powerful, nor that rifles are rarely used in crimes. He wasn’t sure if he’s ever even fired a rifle. Rader also referred to the Sandy Hook shooting as the main reason for banning such guns, as if the deaths of twenty white schoolchildren are somehow more important than the thousands of black and Hispanic victims of all ages that don’t make the national news. On the bright side he seemed open to a discussion of the drug war’s role in causing violence.
When I asked Izaak about the gun issue I didn’t feel he was honest about his real views, and he still didn’t know anything about firearms. There’s no Second Amendment supporter in the race so this issue should not be decisive for any voter.
The big differences come down to knowledge, experience, and realism. For those reasons West Boca News endorses Kevin Rader for State Representative.
With that said, the conversation reflected an underlying problem with our political system. Rader is a consummate insider. He believes the system works better when insiders run it. He spoke approvingly of the nature of that system, where those who play the game are rewarded and others are not. While we don’t like it, we appreciate his honesty about it. We also doubt that Izaak would do anything to change it.
See the Kevin Rader website or his campaign Facebook page for more.

Joshua Izaak: The Need for Education Reform in Florida

By: Joshua Izaak, Democratic Candidate for State Representative District 81

After interviewing Mr. Izaak this week and hearing his passion for education, we asked him to write an article on the topic. We invite any and all other candidates for this office and any other relevant office to submit a response.

Introduction

The current education system in Florida is fatally flawed. It is restricting the development of students, and constraining teachers from reaching their full potential. I have experienced every level of the Florida education system since moving to Florida in 1998, and have seen firsthand its detrimental effects in the classroom. If you were to read the likes of these education statistics published by Upskilled then Florida’s education levels are substandard compared to other areas of the world. The only solution to this systemic problem is a comprehensive reform package that addresses the major factors inhibiting student growth. As your Representative I will fight for these reforms because we need do better than the status quo. The first step is to replace the current state testing regime with a curriculum based approach.

Reforming Standardized Testing

I moved to Florida just as the FCAT was being implemented, and took the test every year from 4th-10th grade. I attended Waters Edge, Loggers’ Run, and both Olympic Heights and West Boca High Schools. The tragedy of the FCAT is that it pigeonholes students into learning how to take a test, rather than allowing students to learn how to think critically, and learn the actual curriculum that should be taught in the classroom. The FCAT also forces teachers to teach to the test, rather than allow them to craft creative lesson plans and techniques tailored to their students’ specific needs.
Unfortunately, the state of Florida couples school funding with standardized test results. Schools get more funding if the students do well on the test. This puts tremendous strain on teachers to spend the majority of their class time administering practice tests, rather than focusing on the actual curriculum that should be covered in the individual class.
Florida has begun to administer certain subject based tests to high school students and will transition to the common core standards in the 2014-2015 school year. While this is a well-intentioned attempt to move away from the traditional FCAT, it does not solve the problems inherent in the system. First, students are prevented from graduating if they fail the exam. This puts tremendous pressure on students, which only increases their chances of not performing at their optimal level on the exam. It also creates an incentive for schools to provide fewer resources to courses that do not have a state testing component. For example, Algebra and Geometry are two of the subjects tested. School funding, teacher pay, and a student’s ability to graduate are all attached to a student’s performance on these exams.
Therefore, schools place the most resources, and the highest skilled teachers in those subjects. However, this is at the expense of those higher level math classes such as Trigonometry and Calculus that do not currently have a state subject test. As a result, higher achieving students may not be provided with all the resources they deserve because their performance in those classes have little to no effect on a school’s revenue stream.
I have a proposed solution. It is only an idea, and not something I am wedded to, or anything set in stone. It is common practice to evaluate students based on standardized criteria, and the pushback I receive is that by eliminating all standardized testing we will remove accountability from the system. Therefore, I have a compromise that will still require a system of testing, but would also improve students’ potential for success.
We must move away from the aptitude tests, and instead shift to curriculum based tests similar to the national AP tests. I took 13 AP classes in high school, and therefore feel that I am able to accurately comment on this issue. The reason I believe I received a better education in AP classes is because AP classes are curriculum oriented. Teachers are provided with a textbook, and instructed to teach their students the information found in the textbook.
At the end of the year students must take a comprehensive exam on the information found in the textbook. There are no tricks to taking the test beyond simply learning the material. This also allows teachers to be creative in their approach, and provides them freedom to craft lesson plans that will be most effective in teaching their students. It also allows students to have more choice in what they wish to study, which is especially helpful if they already know what career path they want to take. For instance, if they know they will want to take the Microsoft 70-742 exam down the line then they can focus more on IT and Mathematics based courses (whilst also doing all their requirements, of couse).
Currently, students do not take standardized tests at the end of the school year. When I took the FCAT, it was administered around March. The curriculum based evaluations would be administered at the end of the second semester. Each class would have a separate end of the year evaluation.
Instead of these tests being the determining factor regarding graduation as is the case with the current system, the new evaluations will function more as a “final exam” and only count as a portion of the student’s semester grade. Currently, a high school student’s semester grade is comprised of the weighted average among the student’s two quarter grades and their semester exam grade. The quarter grades are each weighted 40% and the final exam is weighted 20%. Under my plan, the evaluation will substitute for the 20% final grade.
Therefore, if students have been doing well throughout the year but happen to have a bad test result they won’t be at risk of failing the entire class. Only if a student has been consistently performing poorly, coupled with a poor performance on the final, will their grade average be low enough to result in a failing grade in the class. This maintains accountability in the system while not ruining a student’s future graduation prospects simply as a result of one grade on one examination.
I realize this plan is not perfect, but I believe it is a step in starting a dialogue for improving our current system. I welcome any input in improving my plan, or even providing a plan of your own that you feel improves our education system.

Arts Funding

Not only do we need to foster creativity among teachers and students in academic settings, but we should be providing avenues for students to pursue creativity through the arts. Florida should continue to fund and increase funding for the arts in schools. Fostering creativity has been shown to improve a person’s IQ, as well as cultivate interpersonal and communication skills. Growing a student’s ability to think critically and creatively will pay dividends when these students enter the workforce and have to work collaboratively in business teams, or are tasked with finding solutions to complex world problems. We can never be sure who will become the next great entrepreneur, starting companies like Apple or Google, and it is through cognitive creative stimulation in the arts that these individuals will have the foundation to create the world of the future.
Incentivize Individuals to Become Teachers, Improve Educational Degree Programs, and Foster Growth and Improvement for Current Teachers
I want to create an education system that works to incentivize individuals to enter teaching, improve the educational degree programs in our state colleges, and foster growth and professional development for teachers.
We must continue to increase teacher salary. Teachers are vastly under-compensated considering the responsibility they have to ensure generations of children have the knowledge necessary to succeed.
We must increase the incentives for individuals to become teachers, so that more of Florida’s best and brightest enter the teaching profession. One example would be to provide a college loan forgiveness program for those individuals who become teachers, and who work as teachers for ten years.
We must improve the undergraduate educational degree programs. Currently, many education degrees at universities are considered inadequate. The degree programs at universities do not train students how to be effective educators, and do not challenge the students in their curriculum. This shortchanges future teachers, as well as the children they teach. We need to work with the top teachers in this state, and partner with university administrators to rework the education degree curricula in universities to adequately prepare graduates to teach.
Once teachers receive the degree, schools should continue to foster staff development. We should transform Teacher Work Days into days focused on continuing education opportunities for educators. Schools will provide teachers with workshops and seminars on new and developing techniques to engage students in the classroom. This would increase teacher accountability because they will be given the tools, resources, and guidance to succeed. Schools can better identify teachers who are under-performing and tailor learning opportunities to help them excel in the classroom.

??Continue to Fund Bright Futures and Provide Greater Access to Higher Education

As a recent college and law school graduate, I understand the burden the cost of higher education can be on students. The Bright Futures program is a great way to reduce the cost of in-state tuition. However, recent changes made by the Florida Legislature to minimum requirements will reduce the number of incoming freshmen who receive Bright Futures by approximately half. These changes hurt those students who need the greatest help- middle class, poor, and minority students. We should be encouraging and incentivizing all of our students to receive secondary education. It is imperative that we invest in our students today to ensure the viability of the state of Florida in the future. When elected, I will fight to reduce the cost of higher education as well as increase financial aid to students.
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West Boca High Grad for State Rep: Joshua Izaak

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Okay, so we’re not exactly Joe Biden fans. But Joshua Izaak is a fan, and that’s probably not a bad thing in a Democratic primary race. Izaak is running for State Representative in District 81, which runs west of the Turnpike from the county line up to Wellington. West Boca has a big chunk of the voters, possibly a majority within the district.
We met Mr. Izaak in Mission Bay Plaza, as you can see below.
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Sometimes we get criticized for doing too many negative stories, or mentioning the arrestee’s high school in the headline of a crime story. This is one of those moments we get to do the reverse – a positive story about a local kid.
Mr. Izaak attended Water’s Edge Elementary and Loggers’ Run Middle Schools. He spent a year at Olympic Heights and then West Boca High opened near his home in Boca Falls. His academic accomplishments go up from there, graduating from Emory University and recently from law school at the University of Florida. He’s now 25 years old.
His Democratic political resume includes internships with Ted Deutch who was a State Senator at the time, and with Congressman Robert Wexler. If you read the About page on his website, it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t just sip the liberal Democrat Kool-Aid. He chugs it.

During Joshua’s second summer in law school, he worked at the Democratic National Committee in the Voter Protection Department. Joshua worked to combat Republican attempts to restrict access to the vote through discriminatory laws aimed at reducing voter turnout. Joshua also worked to find solutions in response to the conservative Supreme Court’s decision to strike down portions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Ideologically he’s not my guy. But he’s running in a primary against a Democratic incumbent with no Republican in the race, so it’s not about ideology or party.
During our conversation he was particularly motivated about education. He’s passionate about schools based on his own experience in the ones our kids go to. And contrary to what we expect from his liberal Democrat credentials, he’s strongly against Common Core and high-stakes testing. He wants to decouple school funding from test results.
I challenged him on that from a political standpoint. As we recently reported, West Boca schools do well in such testing. So our schools benefit from the link between testing and funding. Izaak stuck to his guns. The problem, as he sees it, is that schools teach to the tests instead of just teaching so even the kids in the “winning” schools suffer.
Speaking of guns, Izaak criticized Kevin Rader for voting to expand the Stand Your Ground law to protect warning shots. We will be meeting with Rader on Monday and will ask him about that. Izaak is thus positioning himself to the left of Rader on “gun control.” That’s not something that persuades me but might be effective in a Democratic primary.
The two other big distinctions Izaak draws between himself and Rader deal with special interests and access. He feels Rader is affected by special interests, especially in his own industry. Rader works in insurance and Izaak criticized him for an amendment that would shift the burden of dry wall replacement from condo associations to individual condo owners. That might not seem important until you realize how many votes are in Century Village and similar housing in our district.
After the interview I asked Izaak to provide a link or other support about this amendment. He sent me this YouTube video which shows Rader on the floor of the House presenting an unimpressive defense of his amendment.

As for access, Izaak said that Rader is not sufficiently responsive to voters in the district. We’re not sure how to measure that but we’ll ask Rader about it anyway. He certainly responded quickly to our request for an interview.
Despite some disagreements, I was impressed with Izaak. He’s smart, well-educated, passionate, and energetic. He’s the kind of success story we’re happy to see coming out of our local schools and we hope to see more like him.
We should note that although it’s a Democratic primary, Republicans can vote in it because there’s no Republican candidate in the race. The primary election is on August 26th.
Update: We just found a video of Izaak speaking about his campaign.

Disclosure: We also live in Boca Falls, though in a different subdivision and we’ve never met or even heard of Izaak or his family before. We also live around the corner from Ted Deutch and we have met him and his wife, but only briefly.