A professor at Teacher’s College, Columbia University has set up a website to allow New York students, parents and educators to post comments about the new state English language arts test. The tests are now tied to Common Core education standards adopted by 45 states — including Florida. New York students have been taking the [...]
Two stories today look at how school districts are trying to entice staff to take hard-to-fill jobs. Lee County and Miami-Dade schools are considering the obvious solution: More money. In Lee, the school district has tapped a federal grant to pay teachers earning good reviews more money to work in schools with high turnover rates, [...]
Florida is in the process of transitioning to common core standards in public schools. The first full year of implementation is scheduled for 2014-15. 45 states and Washington, D.C. have agreed to adopt common core standards. The standards will measure whether students across the country are reaching certain benchmarks in English, Math and Language Arts. [...]
The second day started with Arne Duncan talking about what his agency is doing and closed with Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ stem winder urging reformers to “go big or go home.”
Is 20 minutes enough time to figure out how well a teacher is doing his or her job? That’s what Miami-Dade teacher Karla Mats asked after she received a 20-minute observation from her principal — the minimum time required by the district. Mats was disappointed she was not among the highest-rated teachers and she questioned [...]
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 [...]
Principals are the key to making a school successful. That’s what the research shows. So what happens when a superintendent pulls several top performing principals out of their roles to fill upper management positions? That’s the move Leon County Superintendent Jackie Pons made, and now he’s defending his decision to reassign seven of his principals.
It’s been nearly a month since self-appointed neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teen in Sanford, Fla. Martin’s death has inspired a national debate about race and justice. But at the high school Martin attended in Miami, his death had not been announced publicly until today, when the school [...]
Our story on Florida schools that paddle students was picked up by NPR and we’ve gotten some comments from folks who wondered about a sexual element to spanking. John Shelley (JackinVosburg) wrote: Why do they hit the kids in the butt? Is this a sexual thing? Conky Swayze (Conky) wrote: There’s so much sexual connotation with [...]
Hillsborough County has won another national education grant, this time to improve principal training. The Wallace Foundation announced Hillsborough was one of six districts to share a $75 million, six-year grant. Districts will receive $7.5 million to $12.5 million to develop programs in four areas: rigorous job requirements, high-quality training, selective hiring, and on-the-job evaluation [...]
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