Teach for America. It’s looking at Tampa Bay for expansion. Gradebook. Charter schools. The Orange school board renews four charters and accepts the voluntary closure of another, reports SchoolZone. A charter school’s plans to move in Miami-Dade don’t make its parents or potential new neighbors happy, reports the Miami Herald. A judge[Read More…]
Tag: FCAT writing
Florida roundup: FCAT money, charter schools, parent trigger & more
School recognition funds. About 1,700 schools will get about $134 million, reports Gradebook. More from SchoolZone, Miami Herald, South Florida Sun Sentinel, TCPalm.com, Florida Times Union, Naples Daily News. Charter schools. Palm Beach Post: “Palm Beach County has pledged to help a nonprofit charter school sell $10.5 million in mostly[Read More…]
Florida roundup: Marco Rubio, charter schools, virtual schools & more
Tax credit scholarships. Tampa Bay Times columnist Robyn Blumner doesn’t like U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s proposal for federal scholarships. Charter schools. Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano bemoans the number of charter schools that close because of low enrollment (but curiously doesn’t mention traditional public schools that don’t get closed despite the[Read More…]
Florida roundup: Education rankings, teacher evaluations, National School Choice Week & more
It’s National School Choice Week. SchoolZone and StateImpact Florida. Grade inflation? The Palm Beach Post writes there is less to Florida’s No. 6 ranking in the latest Education Week Quality Counts report than education reform supporters suggest, and encourages teachers and politicians “to dig into the details.” Teacher evals. Despite concerns raised[Read More…]
Florida roundup: Teacher pensions, school spending, honeymoons & more
No honeymoon for Bennett. Especially from the teachers union, reports WCTV. The new commissioner should resolve the bureaucratic limbo over concordant test scores needed for graduation, editorializes the Tampa Bay Times. Pensions. It’s a political issue for 2014 now that the Florida Supreme Court has ruled against the teachers unions, writes[Read More…]
‘The train has left the station on school choice’ – Florida BOE Chair Gary Chartrand, podcastED
Florida is a national leader in expanding school choice. And the state’s new top education official doesn’t see the momentum slowing, especially with low-income children. “The train has left the station on school choice,” Gary Chartrand, 58, told redefinED by phone this week – his first media interview since being[Read More…]
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Agony and accountability in school choice
Education reform, for some of us, is full of tough calls. And for some of us, there can be particular agony in the gray area where race, poverty and both types of accountability – parental choice and regulatory – intersect. Last week, the school board in Pinellas County, Fla., voted[Read More…]
In Florida’s standardized testing fiasco, a sober assessment of what went wrong
Florida education officials recently posted a frank internal report about what led to the standardized testing flop that has consumed the ed reform debate for the past two months and sparked the biggest backlash yet against the state’s accountability system. Unfortunately, it received virtually no media coverage (one exception here), which is a[Read More…]