Florida's education commissioner resigned Thursday amid, a rising star in a national movement pushing for test-based accountability in public schools, resigned on Thursday after just 7 months in office, after news reports surfaced that he had changed the grade of an Indiana charter school founded by a prominent campaign donor while he was the superintendent of schools. The resignation came 3 days after The Associated Press published an article revealing e-mails that showed Mr.Bennett ordered his staff to change a "C" grade given to Christel House Acadmey, a charter school in Indianapolis, to an "A". The school takes its name from its founder, Christel DeHaan, a former executive at a time share company and one of Mr.Bennett's largest donors during the 2012 election. According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, she donated a total of $90,000 to Mr.Bennett's reelection campaign. The school grades, which can be based on a number of factors, including student test scores and graduation rates, are used to determine whether a school could be taken over by the state or whether students are eligible for taxpayer-financed vouchers to attend private schools.
If the grades arn't based on good measures, it doesn't mater," said Kathy Christie, a spokeswoman for the Education Commission of the states, a policy organization that is planning a study of school grading systems. In the case of the changed grades at Christel House, which opened in 2002 and serves students in kindergarten through 10th grade, Mr.Bennett said at a news conference this week that seeing the school's "C" grade was the aha moment where I had to say something is amiss here because he knew the school was performing well. Mr.Bennett said Christel House was one of 13 schools in Indiana whose initial grades were changed. He said those schools were mistakenly given low scores for graduation rates and college readiness when they did not yet operate complete high schools. A set of standards adopted by 45 states that outline what each student should learn in reading and math from kindergarten through high school. Under the new system, the number of Florida schools that received an "F" more than doubled from a year earlier. The number of schools that received an "A" tumbled from close to half of all public schools in the state to 29 percent.