Today marks 20 days into the school year in Broward County. For some students today will be the last day on their campus and with the teachers they started the year with. Three Broward charter schools have voted to close their doors: Touchdowns4life Charter, a middle school in Tamarac, Fla. Eagle Charter Academy, a 6-12 [...]
Last year Mount Pleasant Standard Base Middle School’s grade dropped to an F from an A. Principal Yolanda Capers says the grade stung because she saw her students improving. “It’s devastating because…our students were still learning,” she says. “58 percent of our students made learning gains in reading. That’s a lot of learning gains. However [...]
When a sixth grader at Southport Middle School hung himself at his Port St. Lucie home, his school made the announcement to some students the next morning. A crisis intervention team went to every class 13-year-old Shayne Ijames attended to tell sixth graders their classmate had committed suicide. His mom, Sheri Leitch, is outraged. “They [...]
Freshman Austin Beaucage has been picked on his whole life. He’s small for his age and socially awkward. But the bullying was never like last month at Coral Shores High School in Key Largo, Fla. “Some senior locked me in a closet in my 6th period and he wouldn’t let me out,” he said. “And [...]
There is a place on school campuses for students who break the rules. In some Florida schools, it’s called SCSI. Marcus Pryor, a junior at Miami Northwestern Senior High, thinks it stands for School Criminal Scene Investigation. SCSI actually stands for School Center for Special Instruction. And in Miami, it’s where students go when they [...]
Danna Contreras doesn’t like the new FCAT. The sophomore at Booker T. Washington High School in Miami emigrated from Colombia three years ago. She wears thick, pink-rimmed glasses and she squints a lot. She says the new computerized version is harder to take. “I think I am better with paper, not on the computer because [...]
Thousands of middle and high school students walked out of 34 Miami schools this week to protest the death of Miami Gardens teen, Trayvon Martin. We’ve got the full list of every school with a walkout from the Miami-Dade school district. And you can find all our coverage on how Trayvon Martin has impacted Florida [...]
Students walked out of 34 Miami middle and high schools on Thursday and Friday, some chanting “Justice for Trayvon,” in a sign of solidarity with the 17-year-old black student who was killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer last month in Sanford, Fla. Protesters numbered more than 1,000 at some schools, others fewer than 100. Some [...]
Spanking in school may seem like a relic of the past. But in Florida, students from preschoolers to high school seniors are still being paddled by teachers and principals. In parts of the state, mostly in the rural north, getting spanked at school, on your butt, with a wooden or fiberglass board, is just part [...]
A study in Education Week makes the case for districts to get rid of middle schools in favor of K-8 schools. Harvard University researchers Guido Schwerdt and Martin R. West looked at public schools in Florida. They used statewide data to track kids in grades 3 through 10 from 2000 to 2009. The study found [...]
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