Got ideas on how to improve American education? You can talk directly to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan before his televised national town hall meeting on Sept. 15. Submit questions via e-mail to Education.TV@ed.gov by Sept. 9, or send videotaped comments by Sept. 2.

For all the details, read this flyer. The official guidelines for the video submissions say: "The more technically sound the video, the more likely the video will air on the show. Be concise (no longer than 45 – 60 seconds); we will not air anything over 60 seconds. Think about your question(s) and comment(s) before recording to video. Direct your question(s) and comment(s) to 'Secretary Duncan' or 'Mr. Secretary.' For example, 'My question for you Mr. Secretary is…' or 'Secretary Duncan, I have a comment about…'

A story in today's Bradenton Herald shows how one school district is managing this year's changes in school grade scoring. There's still an emphasis on the FCAT, but there's also a focus on after-school tutorials. Angela Essig, Manatee district director of secondary schools, points to the the 21st Century after-school program ,which offers tutorials for the students to help them with academics: "We’d like to get it at all of [the schools] but for now are targeting those schools with a high percentage of low income students. ... That will provide more funding to schools to target struggling students.”

The AP reports today that Florida's high school graduates improved by one point on reading and math in the SAT, but did a little worse in their writing scores. Florida students still trail nationwide averages considerably, and are four points behind in critical reading,17 points lower in math, and 13 points behind in writing.

Sen. Bob Graham, a co-chair of the Lawton Chiles Leadership Corps, has an interview in today's Miami Herald talking about his new book, America, The Owner's Manual: Making Government Work for You. The book is a must read for students who want to learn how to influence government. Graham tells the story of how student complaints about cold, greasy pizza turned into a "life-transforming event" when he ended up teaching for 18 weeks at Carol City high school. "I learned about the reality of a big high school, the students, teachers, parents, administrators," Graham says, retelling a story that is now part of Florida history.

Florida has been using the GED Exit Option program to mask a serious dropout problem, claiming the state graduation rate rose from 2000 through 2006 while in fact fewer students are completing four years of high school. The program can help vulnerable students, but it shouldn't allow Florida to hide the grim statistics that earned our state the label of "dropout factory" this year, says an editorial in the Daytona Beach News-Journal this weekend. Writes the News-Journal, "the road to that improvement starts with honesty about how well -- or poorly -- the state's high schools are performing."

As the Orlando Sentinel reports today, colleges are doing what they can to help students heading back to school and finding that Florida has cut their financial aid. Florida's state legislators voted this year to cut Bright Futures scholarships by freezing grants at last year's levels, leaving students to make up the gap for tuition increases of 8 percent at community colleges and 15 percent at state universities. Also gone is the books-and-materials stipend, and students must now complete 24 credit hours each year to renew their scholarships at the maximum amount.

There's a good blog by Geoff Chiles worth checking out at the LCLC site about the hogwash coming out of Tallahassee, where folks will brag about our education system while overlooking a graduation rate that ranks 45th in the nation. So it was refreshing to see some straight talk from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who visited a middle school in Orlando on Wednesday with VP Joe Biden. Duncan pointed out that Florida has 233,000 ninth graders, and only 170,000 in the 12th grade.

"The honest question we have to ask is, what happened to those 63,000 young people?" Duncan said. "And we all here know they didn't leave early to go to the NBA."

On a day when Gov. Charlie Crist was bragging about a high ranking for Florida schools, the Associated Press was reporting that Florida students' ACT scores are still among the lowest in the nation. The teachers and principals visiting Tallahassee credited the work of volunteers, donations, and personnel hiring in turning their schools around. But while one principal was saying that "personnel hiring was the key," teachers in other districts were looking at reports that Florida stands to lose $240 million in education funding, which means there will be fewer teachers. There's also continuing controversy over what constitutes a high school education in Florida, and what that diploma really means.

The Lawton Chiles Leadership Corps site over at BuddyPress is growing fast, and today Worst To First is welcoming the first of what we hope will be many guest blogs from the Leadership Corps. Today's guest blog is from Na'tre Henley, a junior at Boyd Anderson High School in Ft. Lauderdale, talking about his experience on the UCF campus, meeting the Facebook staff, and seeing President Clinton.

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Florida's high school grading system is getting an overhaul this year, while college students who get the state's popular Bright Futures Scholarship are getting squeezed a little more.

A new grading system for high schools means the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test will be less important, as schools now get to include other measures of student perfomance, such as graduation rates for at-risk students, in their grade calculations. In the meantime, those who find their way to college will find that Bright Futures covers fewer costs than it did last year.