The New York Times takes a look at why teachers have a tougher time improving reading performance than math performance. In part, it’s because math lessons are more discrete. A quiz can tell you which math concepts a student is having problems with, as a teacher notes in the story. But reading builds on many [...]
“There’s an unspoken right in our country,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told attendees at the Mackinac Policy Conference in Michigan Wednesday. “That is the right to rise. The right for all Americans to reach their full potential.” Bush gave a keynote speech to the audience of business leaders, spending much of his time talking about [...]
Sara LaBarbera is teaching 6th graders at Walker Middle School near Tampa how to research poets using an online library. One student, working on a series of questions about a Lewis Carroll poem, asks LaBarbera for help. He has the pieces, but doesn’t quite know how to put them together. LaBarbera knows how to ask [...]
Florida is one of 45 states and the District of Columbia to adopt new, tougher education standards. The standards, known as Common Core, requires students to prove what they know — but also to show how they know it. Educators across the state are preparing parents and students for the switch and trying to explain [...]
UPDATE: Matthew Ladner, director of policy research for the Foundation for Excellence in Education, responds. The takeaway: “There are very clear signs of aggregate level improvement in Florida, and also a large number of studies at the individual level showing positive results from individual policies.” At the Shanker Blog researcher Matthew Di Carlo reviews the [...]
2012 was a busy year in Florida education. One state education commissioner left, while another will take the reins early next year. And Florida got great news on an international comparison. Here are the biggest education stories of 2012, with links to StateImpact Florida coverage. International test results — The biggest education story of the [...]
About 600 Miami Dade students are learning to read using an iPod Touch and an app which allows teachers to listen to and track a student’s performance — or receive help from tutors across the country. The Innovations for Learning initiative started as a pilot last year in a handful of classes. It’s now being [...]
Florida’s remedial education needs are much greater than in many other states. Nationwide, about 40 percent of all first-year students need remedial education before they can enroll in credit-bearing courses.
The switch to Common Core State Standards will put more emphasis on reading across disciplines, experts say. Education Week has some solid examples of how that will work, and how the new standards stress comprehension. They also will put more emphasis on writing: Reading instruction is no longer the sole province of the language arts [...]
We told you last June about the Summer Literacy Adventure. It was a reading challenge to keep kids interested in books during the summer break. First Lady Ann Scott visited students at summer camps and parks around the state encouraging them to read as many books as possible. Kids went online and pledged to read [...]
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