The ACLU is worried single-gender classes might reinforce stereotypes of the 1950s.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed federal complaints against school districts in Broward, Hernando, Hillsborough and Volusia counties over the use of all-girls or all-boys classes. The ACLU wants the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to investigate the programs.
StateImpact Florida’s Gina Jordan spoke with Galen Sherwin, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, about the complaints.
Q: Galen, what do the complaints say?
A: Schools shouldn’t be in the business of making crude judgments of children’s educational needs based solely on whether they’re a boy or a girl – that’s the definition of sex discrimination.
They’re using different teaching methods, environments and even curricula.
The Florida PTA is asking the state to delay school grades during the transition to new standards and tests.
The Florida PTA is asking state leaders to consider delaying school grading to give students and schools time to adjust to new math and language arts standards and online tests.
This is the first year every grade is using Florida’s Common Core-based standards and students will take the new Florida Standards Assessment early in 2015.
The Florida PTA is asking:
Allow for proper field-testing and test development in areas with similar demographics to Florida’s diverse demographics — The American Institutes For Research, the state’s new test vendor, is building an exam using test questions developed for Utah. Florida educators are concerned those questions won’t be as valid for Florida, which has a higher percentage of black, Hispanic and low-income students than Utah.
State university officials are asking for $45 million in needs-based aid to help make up for cuts to Bright Futures.
State university leaders want to add $45 million in needs-based financial aid to help make up for changes to the Bright Futures scholarship program. Those new, higher qualifications will eliminate more than $250 million a year in college aid by 2018.
The State University System Board of Governors will discuss the proposal today. UPDATE: The Board of Governors has delayed a vote on adding $45 million. They want more time to discuss the issue.
“Without these funds, retention and graduation rates are likely to fall as students come to grips with the financial implications of continuing their schooling,” system officials wrote in an analysis of the proposal. Students graduating with less debt and ready to enter the workforce can return three times the money in tax revenue and economic growth than the cost of the aid, they wrote.
The report also notes a strong correlation between income and college entrance exam test scores, such as the ACT and SAT. Bright Futures eligibility is now heavily dependent on SAT and ACT scores. The U.S. Department of Education has reopened an investigation to determine whether Bright Futures’ use of test results is discriminatory.
University of Central Florida elementary education students discuss how to incorporate books, maps, magazines and other materials into lesson plans in this 2013 photo.
A strong majority of Americans surveyed want teachers to have at least one year’s practice time in the classroom and pass a board certification before teaching, according to a new national poll.
The Phi Delta Kappa professional teacher’s organization and Gallup released a second batch of their annual survey data Tuesday. The poll surveyed 1,001 adults by phone and has a margin of error of 4.6 percent.
“It appears we’ve reached a real turning point in public attitudes,” said William Bushaw, chief executive officer of PDK International. “While we can speculate about all the factors that brought us here, there’s no longer any question about whether the public supports a major overhaul in the preparation and evaluation of teachers.”
Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed said they trust teachers. And seven in ten said they oppose the use of standardized tests to evaluate teachers.
But 43 percent surveyed said teachers should have a year of practice time under a certified teacher before taking over a classroom. Another 30 percent said teachers needed two years of practice time.
Senate Education Chairman John Legg said lawmakers may base financial aid requirements on high school courses instead of just test scores.
A key Senate lawmaker may put less emphasis on test scores to determine which students qualify for state financial aid for college — possibly including Bright Futures.
Instead, scholarships and grants would depend more on taking tougher classes in high school.
In the future, students could have to earn the new scholar version of Florida’s high school diploma to qualify for state aid. Florida also has a standard diploma and another focused on job certifications.
Florida lawmakers raised required SAT and ACT score for Bright Futures, slashing the number of students receiving the scholarships. One in three high school graduates qualified for Bright Futures at its peak. Now, just one in eight graduates qualifies.
“There has been concern,” Legg said. “Obviously, when a student misses the Bright Futures eligibility, people are not happy with that.
“I think you’ll see the Legislature discussing how can we take those designations and attach some financial incentives.”
Jake Seiler had to put his plans to attend the University of South Florida on hold for a year to earn an associate's degree at Palm Beach State College because he didn't qualify for Bright Futures. His dad, Paul, calls changes to Bright Futures an "injustice."
Most new Palm Beach College Students were going through orientation earlier this month, but Jake Seiler was wrapping up his first three courses.
Despite earning the highest SAT scores of his two siblings — 1100, on six attempts — Seiler didn’t score high enough this year to earn the Bright Futures Florida Medallion scholarship his older sister got last year.
That’s becauseBright Futures, Florida’s lottery-funded college scholarship, has finished going through what supporters say is a fundamental change. The program has raised required test scores and become much more exclusive. Bright Futures is now exclusively a merit-based program and not focused on expanding access to higher education.
And that means students like Seiler, who once would have qualified for the scholarship with ease, no longer make the cut. And he isn’t alone.
Ron Frazier, CEO of BAC Funding Corporation, a non-profit that lends to minority-owned businesses, and a retired architect, helped lead the Urban League and NAACP review of school district contracts.
The Urban League of Miami and the local NAACP want the Miami-Dade school district to stop work on a $1.2 billion bond project to renovate schools and upgrade their technology.
The groups believe black-owned businesses aren’t getting a fair chance at school construction projects.
It was a district review of contracts — a legal requirement if the district wants to allocate contracts based on race or gender — which re-ignited the long-simmering dispute. The district review found black-owned businesses received a disproportionately larger share of district subcontracts.
Urban League and NAACP leaders questioned that conclusion and said the district couldn’t verify their numbers. So they launched their own review and released the results at a meeting Wednesday evening.
“We don’t believe what nobody tell us,” said T. Willard Fair, president of the Urban League of Greater Miami. “Because past experiences tell us that if we don’t stay on top of it, they have a…way of not remembering what they told us yesterday.”
Lily Eskelsen Garcia asks students what they want from the president on a visit to Allapattah Middle School last week.
At a Spanish restaurant in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, one of the most powerful women in education, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, pumps up union members by telling them where her career started – the cafeteria.
Thursday was her fourth day on the job. She started at 6 a.m. with a tour of the Keys by plane. She followed with visits to Allapattah Middle School and Hialeah High School in Miami-Dade County.
And she wrapped up a 12-hour day with a high-energy pitch for union members to get out and support Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist in his race against Republican Gov. Rick Scott.
“I like to say I was the lunch lady – that was my first job in a public school,” Eskelsen Garcia told about 50 members of the United Teachers of Dade. “That is padding my resume. I was the salad girl.
Students at the all-girls Ferrell Preparatory Academy in Tampa.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed federal complaints challenging single-gender education programs in Broward, Hernando and Volusia county schools.
The group argues single-gender programs violate anti-discrimination laws and are based on flawed science. The ACLU has previously filed a complaint against single-gender programs in Hillsborough County schools.
“Parents should know that their school districts are spending tens of thousands of dollars training teachers that boys and girls are so different that they have to be taught separately using radically different teaching methods,” ACLU attorney Amy L. Katz said in a statement. “This theory is based on junk science that has been soundly debunked by experts, and has never been shown to improve educational outcomes.”
The ACLU complaint alleges the group has found documents that outline different teaching methods for boys and girls. That violates federal Title IX laws, the group said.
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