Behind the graduation rates: The impressive high school graduation rates reported last month by the Florida Department of Education are bolstered by the subtraction of about 60,000 students who were recategorized as "withdrawing" from their schools. That's about 22 percent of the number of students who began 9th grade four years ago. Some of those 60,000 transferred, some moved, some enrolled in private schools, some are home-schooled, some have died. But no one knows if any of those students graduated. Florida Phoenix. Legislators are considering expanding the paths to high school graduation. Here's what some students think should, and shouldn't, be done. Tampa Bay Times.

New court, new hope: The new, more conservative Florida Supreme Court has Republicans hopeful that the idea of private school vouchers can be reconsidered. The court struck down the "opportunity scholarship" proposal of then-Gov. Jeb Bush in 2006, ruling that it "diverts public dollars into separate private systems parallel to and in competition with the free public schools that are the sole means set out in the Constitution for the state to provide for the education of Florida’s children.” Tampa Bay Times. (more…)