School choice. Pasco Superintendent Kurt Browning says the district's record in providing more school choice has been "abysmal." Gradebook.

Charter schools. The principal of a YMCA charter in Venice is put on leave for undisclosed reasons. Sarasota Herald Tribune.

School turnarounds. Seven teachers who applied to keep their jobs at struggling Lacoochee Elementary in Pasco are not selected. Tampa Bay Times.

School rankings. Newsweek says 115 of the nation's 2,000 best high schools, including five of the Top 20, are in Florida. StateImpact Florida. Nine Volusia schools make the list, reports the Daytona Beach News Journal.

School spending. Miami Herald: "On Wednesday, the Miami-Dade School Board voted to explore the establishment of a trademark and licensing program that would create official district merchandise and at the same time outlaw pirate products." The Lake County School Board looks at a slew of cuts to close a $16 million budget deficit, reports the Orlando Sentinel. The Marion school board rejects pay raises for teachers and paraprofessionals through the end of this year, reports the Ocala Star Banner.

Legislative wrap-up. Parent trigger aside, Patricia Levesque sees a lot of positive changes. Orlando Sentinel. (more…)

It shouldn’t be a secret that some Florida school districts perform better than others, despite more challenging demographics. Yet for years, it’s been a fact hidden in plain sight. Now, though, a leading think tank is giving the Legislature and the Florida Board of Education a compelling reason to take a closer look.

A new study from the Brookings Institution, released this morning, relays what FCAT data has been trying to tell us. Some Florida districts are chugging ahead despite a heavier load of high-poverty kids, while some with lighter loads lag. Some are making sustained gains relative to the pack, while others progress in fits and starts. The differences are puzzling, fascinating and, if you happen to live in an underperforming district, maddening. Yet they’ve been given scant attention by researchers, reporters, policy makers and advocacy groups.

Stepping into the vacuum, Brookings’ Brown Center on Education Policy analyzed a decade’s worth of test data for fourth- and fifth-graders in Florida and North Carolina. It controlled for race, income and other variables. And it came away with two findings: 1) School districts account for only a small percentage of the total variation in student achievement – 1 to 2 percent. (Teachers account for about 7 percent). But 2) the differences between districts are still so great that by the end of the school year, a kid in a higher-performing district can be nine weeks ahead - a quarter of a school year ahead - of a like student in a lower-performing district. Over time, the accumulated deficits would obviously be staggering.

“We suggest that a variable that can potentially increase productivity by 25% is important,” the researchers wrote. “These are differences that are large enough to warrant policy attention.”

It's not just Florida and North Carolina that should be crunching more numbers. As the report notes, there are roughly 14,000 school districts nationwide. In this age of accountability and choice, parents routinely compare schools, and all kinds of think tanks compare states. But districts? Not so much.

The Brookings researchers pointed to districts that showed distinctive patterns relative to other districts – they were either consistently high performing, consistently low performing, dramatically rising or dramatically tanking. In Florida, the districts that fit that bill were Broward, Duval, Orange and Collier, respectively. These districts weren’t necessarily the ones that made the most pronounced pattern in each category. And the researchers offered a number of cautionary caveats, including, again, that they only looked at data for two grades, and that comparisons were made “relative to their demographic odds” – not to a set standard like FCAT pass rates.

But still, the trend lines punctuate the point: District performance deserves a spotlight. (more…)

Bennett

Tony Bennett. On his first day on the job, he meets with superintendents and the Florida Association of District Administrators and says he is an “unapologetic advocate for school choice,” reports the Tallahassee Democrat. More from The Buzz. His first comments on the “Commissioner’s Blog” here. Interview with StateImpact Florida.

Charter school funding. More than 1,000 people turn out for a meeting called by Pembroke Pines charter parents to demand equal funding for charter schools, reports the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

School spending. If the Broward school district wants to get the money to repair old schools, it will have to restore trust with voters and overcome a “long and lousy history of stunningly bad behavior,” editorializes the Miami Herald: “The district has been plagued by cronyism, mismanagement and a culture of dishonesty. In a scathing grand jury report released almost two years ago, jurors said they found the district so thoroughly corrupt, so reckless in its spending of taxpayers’ money, they would have recommended abolishing the school board completely if the state Constitution didn’t require its existence.” In Manatee, a forensic audit finds “incompetency -- not criminal or illegal activity -- caused a $3.4 million budget deficit that rocked the public trust,” reports the Bradenton Herald. More from the Sarasota Herald Tribune.

School prayer law. “For the Satanists, it was a godsend,” writes Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerabino.

Cold water on the party. Former state Sen. Dan Gelber says there isn’t much for Florida to celebrate in the latest Education Week rankings. Florida Voices.

Murmurs. School administrators wanted to hear more from Gov. Rick Scott, writes Tampa Bay Times columnist Steve Bousquet.

Merit pay challenge. A hearing on the FEA’s challenge of SB 736 is set for Wednesday in Leon County Court. SchoolZone. (more…)