Expanded-day benefits: Students at the state's 300 lowest-performing elementary schools benefit from the extra hour of daily reading instruction the state requires, according to new research from the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. The extra time requirement began in 2012 at the 100 lowest-performing schools, and two years later was expanded to 300 schools. Researchers who looked at the 2012 data say that in one school year, students’ test scores jumped by the equivalent of one to three months of extra learning. That cut the gap in reading test scores between the best schools and average ones by about a third. Chalkbeat.

Teacher shortage: Florida's shortage of teachers is real and it's getting worse, the Florida Board of Education was told this week. Cathy Boehme of the Florida Education Association told the board that two years ago, the number of advertised teaching positions posted on district websites was about 2,400. Last year it was 3,000, and this year it's 4,063. "That's the acceleration in the teacher shortage you need to be looking at," Boehme said. "This is a critical problem we must address." Gradebook. (more…)