So you think you want to make the switch and send your kid to a charter school, but you don’t know where to start.
As a part of our ongoing series on charter schools, we’ve identified the best places you can turn to to help you decide which Florida charter school is best for your child.
Find a Florida Charter
There are more than 500 charter schools in Florida today, and navigating the state Department of Education website isn’t always the quickest way to find what you’re looking for. Although the FDOE maps all of the charter schools throughout the state, it isn’t the best tool for locating schools near you.
We’ve found the Florida Consortium of Public Charters does a good job of finding the schools for you. For a list of charter schools located near your home or work zip code, you can search here.
Where are the “A” and “F” Charters?
Maybe you want your kid to attend only the top performing Florida charters. Or maybe you just want to know which schools are the failing charters. To get the rundown on school report cards from 1999-2011, you can click this FDOE page.
The program started with cereal, but has now added lots of other items — even Hi-Liter markers. School officials and dietitians say it’s possible to collect box tops and still choose healthy foods.
But many of the participating products are far from a health teacher’s dream: Betty Crocker SuperMoist cake mixes, Cocoa Puffs Brownie Crunch, Pillsbury Big Deluxe Cookies, Spider-Man Fruit Flavored Shapes.
Teachers protest budget cuts and Senate bill 736 -- now law -- in Miami in March.
Teacher merit pay systems need less objectivity and more accountability if they are to work, argues an economist at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.
Rating and paying teachers based on student test scores is unlikely to improve teachers, writes Arnold Kling. It is easier to “game” the system if it is based on a simple formula, Kling wrote.
A new Florida law requires school districts to evaluate teachers and pay educators based on their performance. Half a teacher’s evaluation hinges on student Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test scores.
“People closest to the teacher, including peers, principals, and parents, have more information about teacher quality than what can be obtained by remote administrators relying on test scores,” Kling writes.
Steve Jobs' inventions, particularly the iPad, will leave a lasting impact on education
The death of Apple founder Steve Jobs is an education story as well as a business story.
Among the Jobs tributes flooding the Internet Wednesday night was this from the parent of an autistic child. Although the son does not talk, the parent wrote, he uses Apple’s iPad to communicate.
“Thank you Steve Jobs for helping my son,” the parent wrote on CNN’s iReport site. “You have given us hope we thought we would never have.”
The parent summed up Jobs’ impact on the son very simply: “Steve Jobs saved my son.”
The sign says academy, but is it a charter school?
There are a lot of Florida schools that look and function like charters, but really aren’t.
And when we embarked on this series, we couldn’t always tell the difference between one public school with a focus on science and another public school with a focus on science. But it turns out there can be quite a bit distinguishing the two.
To help ease confusion, we’ve created a pop quiz for you.
1. A public school with a theme or academic focus is a… (Choose all that apply):
A. Charter school
B. Private school
C. An Academy
D. Magnet school
Vice President Joe Biden argued Congress should approve a jobs bill that includes $35 billion to add or maintain education jobs.
Pitching the effects on Pasco County elementary students, Vice President Joe Biden made a case for President Barack Obama’s jobs bill Tuesday.
Biden pulled plenty of local anecdotes for his stop at Oakstead Elementary School in Land O’ Lakes: The $54 million shortfall the district faced this year; the 513 jobs cut; the eight Oakstead teachers no longer working at the school.
Obama’s jobs bill, Biden said, would mean $35 billion across the country to add or preserve 400,000 education jobs.
The bill would mean 26,000 education jobs in Florida. Pasco County would get $40 million in emergency funding the county could use towards an expected $26 million deficit next year.
“No one can tell whether or not these shortfalls put these beautiful kids a month behind in their overall education?” Biden asked. “Six months? A year? Or two years? But the truth is it does slow down…their capacity to learn.”
Yesterday we looked at some of the misconceptions about how Florida charter schools must operate.
Today we’ll take a look at a couple of charter contracts to see the different requests school districts make of charter applicants. Seminole County asked Galileo School for Gifted Learning to abide by the class size limits for district schools, for instance, instead of the slightly more forgiving standards usually applied to charter schools.
Below is a Hillsborough County charter school contract. We’ve added some notes to point out important sections.
To read the contract of a Duval County charter school run by a for-profit firm, click here.
For Galileo School for Gifted Learning’s charter click here.
And finally, a Duval County charter high school here.
A Polk County high school under construction last year.
Florida schools will have little construction money next year after state economists reduced their estimate by 70 percent Monday.
Schools will have about $113 million available, down from the $380 million initially expected for the budget year beginning July 1, 2012.
Utility taxes provide much of the school construction fund, but economists said fewer people are buying electricity because businesses have closed or larger homes remain vacant. The school bond fund is being hit by a longer-term trend too: More consumers are buying energy-efficient appliances.
If Michele Gill learned anything from helping open a Seminole County charter school this fall it’s this: Charter schools cannot do anything they want.
Despite some public perceptions, Gill said opening Galileo School for Gifted Learning has meant navigating a complicated network of state and federal regulations. Then school leaders have to make sure the local school board is happy with the plan, she said.
Gov. Rick Scott visits an Opa Locka charter school earlier this year. Lawmakers approved a law making it easier for highly rated charter schools to expand.
Charter schools do have some big advantages, said Gill, but not as many as most people believe.
“These are expensive and difficult things to do and they’re very hard for a charter school to take care of,” she said. “What I have found out personally is they are quite restrictive. They are way more restrictive than a private school would be.
That’s a conclusion one could draw from an Indiana University study on the importance of teaching handwriting over keyboard skills, according to a story from our friends at StateImpact Indiana.
IU psychology professor Karin James says research shows letter writing activates portions of the brain critical to reading in children.
Like Indiana, Florida has joined 42 other states adopting a set of national curriculum guidelines that emphasize teaching students how to type. Many schools are purchasing electronic tablets, such as the iPad, to replace traditional textbooks.
What do you think of the conclusions? Have schools abandoned traditional skills such as handwriting? What have been the results?
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