H.B. 7069: The Duval County School Board votes 4-2 to join at least 10 other districts in a lawsuit challenging the state's controversial new "schools of hope" legislation. “This is not about taking choices away from kids,” school board member Becki Couch says about the challenge to H.B. 7069. “This is not about disliking charter schools." Florida Times-Union. Florida Politics. WOKV. WJCT.
Third-grade retention: A new study in the Journal of Public Economics examines Florida's policy requiring most third graders to show basic reading proficiency before advancing to fourth grade. It finds mixed results. Students held back under the policy went on to perform better in high school, the study finds. But they still completed about the same number of credit-hours as their peers. They also graduated at roughly similar rates. Education Next.
School grades: Twenty-four of 33 south Florida schools that initially received incomplete grades from the state finally get their grades. Five receive A grades, and three alternative schools get an F. Sun-Sentinel. Nine Pasco County schools also finally get grades. Two improved, and seven maintained their 2016 grades. Gradebook.
DeVos visit: U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visits two Tallahassee schools today. This morning she's at a private school, Holy Comforter Episcopal School. In the afternoon she will tour the Florida State University High School, a developmental research charter school. Tallahassee Democrat. Miami Herald.
There's a school of thought in educational choice that parents exercise the most brutally efficient form of quality control, steering their children clear of institutions that don't teach them well.
That appears to be what happened with Valor and Virtue Academies, a quartet of single-gender charter schools in Duval County, Fla. They launched with hopes of raising achievement for low-income students in the same Northwest Jacksonville neighborhoods targeted by KIPP, but they struggled academically, drew warnings from the district about financial insolvency, and now they'll be closed before Christmas.
According to the Florida Times-Union, the four schools enrolled roughly 360 students, which means they've fallen short of the projections listed when they applied to the school district. Now families are being uprooted in the middle of the school year, the school district is picking up the pieces, and local TV news stations are running segments that aren't exactly advertisements for the school choice movement. (more…)
School choice enjoys growing political support in Florida's largest city, but that hasn't led to plethora of high-quality options.
At least not yet, according to a new report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which looks at the school choice landscape in 30 large cities.
Students in Jacksonville have access to multiple private school choice programs, a small-but-growing charter school sector, a host of magnet schools and a superintendent intent on adding more district-run options to the mix. All of them enjoy at least some support among district leaders and state policymakers.
Yet, the report says, critics who argue the city's charters have grown too quickly to ensure quality may "have a point."
Despite their rapid growth (or perhaps because of it), on average Jacksonville’s charters perform worse than its traditional district schools in reading— the only city in our study for which this is the case— and perform no better in math.
Jackonville's still-young, but growing, collection of KIPP charter schools, which have improved their own academic performance and launched a collaboration with the Duval County school district, may be the most prominent sign of hope. (more…)
A screenshot of a cached copy of Acclaim Academy's website, dated May 5.
The Florida Times-Union takes a deep dive this morning into the collapse of the Acclaim Academy charter school network.
We took a look at the chain's unraveling here, but the newspaper adds important details, including one that appears to have gotten the attention of Duval County school board members. Dennis Mope, Acclaim's CEO, had previously filed for bankruptcy.
That raises the question: Why didn't this come up when Acclaim applied to open its first charter school? Shouldn't districts take this kind of information into account when they vet prospective charter school operators?
The Times-Union reports:
The Florida Board of Education this morning will hear an appeal from a charter school that was rejected by the Duval County School Board.
Sometimes state officials are confronted with tough calls, or situations where the state charter school appeals commission supports overturning the local board's rejection of a charter application. One such case, where the Palm Beach County School Board tried to take a stand against charter school growth, is making its way through a state appeals court.
In this case, however, the Duval school board unanimously voted not to approve the proposed Arts Academy of Jacksonville Preparatory School, and the appeals commission has voted to support their decision.
District staff found the school's application lacking or incomplete in important areas, from where it planned to recruit students to its plan for promoting academic excellence.
They also noted the operator's president briefly ran a school that quickly shut down, early in the 2009 school year. (The school, however, contends the administrator in question has since "gained more knowledge" and "obtained more experience" that would help her run a charter school successfully.) (more…)
Vitti
Recent news from Jacksonville, according to the Florida Times-Union: The Duval County School Board is predicting charter schools will continue to grow, drawing more students from district schools and creating a multi-million-dollar shortfall in the district's budget.
There are a couple of things worth noting here.
So what to do?
We recent took a look at the rise of dropout-recovery charter schools, a niche that has blossomed under the radar around Florida, at times with the support of school districts.
The Florida Times-Union reports some of these schools are coming under scrutiny from the Duval County School Board. On Tuesday, the board imposed a new ultimatum for three Jacksonville credit-recovery charters to raise their graduation rates.
The paper reports the schools are being asked to boost their graduation rates by 25 percent a year.
That’s a tough challenge, but the schools are willing to take it on, said Angela Whitford-Narine, president of Accelerated Learning Solutions Florida. “We understand the district’s desire to raise the on-time graduation rates ... and have agreed to this particular performance measure,” she said.
“It is a stretch for a program such as ours, where most of the students are already past their graduation [age] or are significantly behind, to meet this criteria,” she said. “But we are willing to accept this challenge as part of our collaboration with the district.”
Taylor Richardson appears before the Duval County School Board in October.
Wearing a flight suit from her summer trip to Space Camp, fifth-grader Taylor Richardson stood in front of the Duval County School Board and told them how glad she was to be at Chet's Creek Elementary.
"Chet's has changed my life for the better, and I am proud to be a product of the public education system," she said.
She almost had to leave the school she loved after third grade, when her family moved across town. But her mother, Toni Richardson, pleaded with district administrators for a special assignment. For the past two years, she has driven her daughter nearly 23 miles each way, allowing her to finish fourth and fifth grade at the school where teachers helped her grow from a struggling reader to an advocate for literacy and a success story in science.
Taylor is among the hundreds of thousands of Florida students attending traditional public schools outside their assigned zone. Close to one in ten public school students participate in district open enrollment programs, which are among the state's most widely used forms of school choice.
That option is not available everywhere, which means for many families, public school choice looks a lot like it does for the Richardsons — special assignments agreed to by administrators, and long drives across town.
Bills now under consideration in the state Legislature are aimed at opening up more options, by giving all students the right to transfer to any public school that has room, and giving them more freedom to cross district lines. The proposals bring two issues into focus: The increasing competition and differentiation among public schools, and the importance of ensuring families can overcome barriers to school choice. (more…)
Superintendents. It's not elected-vs-appointed that matters; it's the quality of leadership, state Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, writes in the Pensacola News-Journal. Palm Beach school board members are incensed that their superintendent is job-hunting in nearby districts. Palm Beach Post. Duval Superintedent Nikolai Vitti gives the school board his self-evaluation. Florida Times-Union. Volusia's superintendent is expected to resign tonight. Daytona Beach News-Journal.
Testing. Florida students cannot legally opt out of standardized testing. Orlando Sentinel.
STEM. A Central Florida private school students wins recognition for science research. Orlando Sentinel. Gov. Rick Scott promotes STEM programs in the Panhandle. Pensacola News-Journal.
School recognition. Marion schools receive their share of state school recognition funding. Ocala Star-Banner.
PLSAs. Personal Learning Scholarship Accounts helped a fifth grader with special needs achieve independence, his mother writes on the EdFly. The program is administered by organizations like Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog and employs the author of this post.
Rev. HK Matthews of Pensacola talks school choice and civil rights at a National School Choice Week kickoff rally in Jacksonville.
Nearly 2,000 students and parents packed Jacksonville's Florida Theatre to start the largest-ever week-long celebration of school choice.
National School Choice Week officially starts Jan. 25, but Friday's rally was part of the first round of more than 11,000 planned events. The events aim for a celebratory tone, with music, dancing, celebrity guests and tributes to the range of educational options: district, charter, private, virtual and home education.
Desmond Howard, a former Jacksonville Jaguar and Heisman Trophy winner, told the capacity crowd that some students benefit from options beyond the schools that are assigned to them.
"I don't believe your potential should be limited because of your ZIP code, because of your assigned school, because of an antiquated system that limits families from accessing quality schools," he said. "As a parent, I know this first hand. Every child is unique."
Denisha Merriweather, who grew up in Jacksonville and has become a prominent advocate for school choice, helped set the stage for figures like Duval County School Board member Jason Fischer, state Board of Education member Gary Chartrand and Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform. Others, like U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, made video appearances.
Merriweather attended Esprit de Corps Center for Learning with the help of a scholarship funded by Step Up For Students, the non-profit that administers the scholarship program and co-hosts this blog.
Public school options — especially those that emphasize the arts — got a shout out from Florida's Teacher of Year, Christie Bassett, who leads the art department at Highlands Grove Elementary in Polk County.
"When parents have more say in where their children go to school, everybody wins," she said, adding: "We love having choices in every area of our lives. Education should be no different."
Step Up For Students Chief Storyteller Lisa Davis contributed reporting and photos to this post.
