Fla. House panel approves personalized learning bill

Sullivan

A Florida House Education panel approved legislation this morning that would expand a state initiative intended to help students learn at their own pace.

The bill would open a personalized learning pilot program to every district in the state and give participating school districts more flexibility to decide how they award course credit to middle and high schoolers.

Rep. Jennifer Sullivan, R-Mount Dora and sponsor of HB 1035, said it would give districts more freedom to innovate.

“We know that currently in our classroom, in the good parameters that we have in place, we are failing many of our students with the learning gaps that they” {develop}, she said. “Students that are graduating without the skills needed to go straight to work.”

The bill is intended to promote a shift toward “mastery-based learning” in public schools. The idea is that students should advance to higher levels of learning based on their mastery of a topic, rather than the amount of time they spend in class. And instruction should cater to individual students’ needs.

Sullivan said teachers often have to focus on the average student, which doesn’t meet the needs of every student in a class.

“One-third is ahead of the content being taught,” she said. “One-third is completely lost and does not have foundational skills to be able to proceed and the other one-third is the one teachers are teaching to.”

In addition, the bill would give participating school districts more flexibility to decide how they award course credit to middle and high schoolers. Right now, the law requires students to receive “135 hours of bona fide instruction” in a course before they get credit.  The bill would allow school districts to develop systems that award credit based on a student’s mastery of a course’s content, regardless of how much time they spend.

Sue Woltanski, a parent and activist with the organization Common Ground, spoke in opposition to the bill. She raised a concern about the transition to a new grading system.

“With my daughter in high school, I am nervous about programs that might alter the way my child is graded and alter the way she could get accepted to college,” she said.

Sullivan said school districts could still follow an A-F grading system for students’ report cards. The bill, however, but give teachers more flexibility to align their grading with a “mastery-based” approach that allows students to progress once they’ve fully mastered a topic.

“When you think of a current grading system, you can get a ‘C,’ which means you partly only know the content, but you still pass,” she said.

P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School is leading Florida’s foray into personalized learning. School districts in Palm Beach, Seminole and Pinellas Counties have begun experimenting with the concept. Representatives from those districts spoke in favor of the bill. Lake County, however, backed out of the program earlier this year.

Sullivan said districts participating in the program are reporting success. Lake County pulled out of the program because the district changed course with a new superintendent, Diane Kornegay.

“The previous superintendent [Susan Moxley], with all due respect, did not implement it well and did not really set up our teachers for success,” Sullivan said.

Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, has filed similar legislation in the Senate.


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BY Livi Stanford

Livi Stanford is former associate editor of redefinED. She spent her earlier professional career working at newspapers in Kansas, Massachusetts and Florida. Prior to her work at Step Up For Students, she covered the Lake County School Board, County Commission and local legislative delegation for the Daily Commercial in Leesburg. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Kansas.