A Florida lawmaker has introduced a bill to earmark gaming revenue for education. Lawmakers are likely to debate allowing megacasinos.
A Jacksonville state Senator has filed a bill that would earmark gambling money for K-12 education as state lawmakers prepare to debate allowing megacasinos, according to the Jacksonville TImes-Union.
The bill would set aside 2 percent of gaming revenue for a Department of Education endowment and juvenile justice.
But is it a good idea to rely on gambling to fund schools?
Lawmakers have had to restrict eligibility for the lottery-funded Bright Futures scholarship program as revenues have flattened, and eventually declined, in the past few years. Lottery revenues typically plateau as they reach “maturity,” experts say.
Shamir Ali of Bangladesh made national headlines after StateImpact Florida and others described his plight: He was being deported, even though the Obama Administration’s policy was to allow college students like him to stay in the U.S.
That’s put a wrench into his plans to enroll in college full-time. Here’s an update from Shamir:
“I’m trying to sign up for full-time spring 2011 classes at Miami Dade College.
They acknowledged that I’m legal but want evidence that I’ve been in Florida for at least 12 months, which I have. This has nothing to do with ICE. It has to do with the State of Florida requiring strict evidence of residency to qualify for in state tuition. Continue Reading →
An Orlando mom just gave her child a lesson in how not to handle a bully. 31-year-old Leslie Ann Thomas is facing a string of charges for attacking an Orange County middle school student.
Investigators say Thomas did not have permission to be on school property when she entered the lunchroom and hit one of the kids. Witnesses say she blocked others from trying to help. Her daughter is also accused of participating in the fight.
It’s not known what kind of bullying her daughter endured and whether Thomas had made any efforts to discuss the problem with school administrators.
The Academy of Arts and Minds in Coconut Grove used to be a shopping mall. But no one was buying space, so the owner of the property founded a charter school and now rents his property to his school. The campus still looks like a shopping mall. There are wrap-around balconies on every floor and the classroom have floor-to-ceiling windows very much like a store front.
Miami-Dade school district officials say a Coconut Grove charter school is “heading in the right direction” and they will not close the school this month, according to the Miami Herald.
The school — which is A-rated — has drawn criticism for a handful of practices:
• For years, Arts & Minds has charged fees ranging from $15 for classes like math, reading and physical education to $60 for classes like dance, graphic design and photography. School district officials say some of those fees are illegal, and want to examine the records.
• This year, Arts & Minds fell behind in evaluating and crafting education plans for special-needs students.
• Some classes had neither teachers nor textbooks for the first five weeks of school, parents said.
Parents have also questioned the role of the school’s founder, Manuel Alonso-Poch, who serves as the school’s landlord, manager and food-service provider. His cousin, Ruth “Chuny” Montaner, is the chairwoman of the governing board.
Florida is one of 11 states that asked the U.S. Department of Education to waive federal No Child Left Behind provisions.
A couple of months ago, President Obama agreed to offer states more flexibility from the federal mandates if states submitted a request showing their commitment to boost student achievement.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said, “We set a high bar and an aggressive deadline, but these states rose to the challenge.”
Each state designed a plan to do the following:
Develop rigorous accountability systems that include a focus on low-performing schools and schools with persistent achievement gaps. Continue Reading →
“I was informed during the EET (Evaluating Effective Teachers) orientation session last year that I would only be observed by a peer teacher that had experience in my level and field,” Thomas wrote in an email to evaluator Justin Youmans on October 7. “I thus refuse to be evaluated by any teacher who has no experience teaching Social Studies in a Hillsborough County High School.”
Gov. Rick Scott is pointing towards U.S. Census data to support his argument that state universities should focus on STEM degrees.
Gov. Rick Scott is stoking his feud with social scientists, adding some data to his argument that state universities should push more students toward degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, fields.
Scott’s press office sent around a link to a Wall Street Journal collection of unemployment rates by college major. The database was compiled by the Georgetown University Center on Education and Workforce from 2010 U.S. Census data.
“This effective tool shows which majors have the highest employment and unemployment rates along with their associated earnings,” spokesman Brian Burgess noted in an email sent Friday.
Scott drew the ire of anthropologists last month after the governor singled them out as one field where future job prospects are lacking. State resources should not be spent educating students who are less likely to find work, he argued.
Charles Reed is the former chancellor of Florida's university system, and now leads the nation's largest system in California.
Charles Reed says Florida’s colleges and universities have lost their way.
He paints a picture of a disjointed, parochial higher education system where every university and college is out for itself, and “It’s turned into what the local chamber wants, not what the state needs.”
“That’s no place for a polytechnic university,” he said. “That’s no Silicon Valley. California has only two polytechnics for 38 million people — and we have Silicon Valley.”
Why should you care? Reed has a unique perspective, as chancellor of the State University System of Florida from 1986 to 1998, and chancellor of the California State University system since 1998. Continue Reading →
Florida C.A.N. promotes college-readiness, access, and success for limited-income, first generation, and underrepresented students.
Now that the drama over USF Polytechnic is behind us (at least for now,) higher education officials are back to focusing on less showy things…like helping more Florida students to graduate successfully and get good-paying jobs.
That last part is the mission of Florida College Access Network (Florida C.A.N.) They’ve issued “A Call for Leadership” that urges state leaders not to focus on bright shiny objects (like proposed Texas reforms that don’t seem likely to take place even there).
(Full disclosure: Florida C.A.N. is a financial supporter of StateImpact Florida. As part of our agreement, they exercise no influence over what we report or how we report it.)
When is a hug innocent or inappropriate? Administrators at Southwest Middle School in Palm Bay adopted a zero tolerance, no-hugging policy so school officials would not have to differentiate. But, that policy resulted in the in-school suspension of two Florida middle school students for hugging even though the principal said it appeared innocent.
Zero tolerance is typically applied to school policies like “no firearms”, but supporters said zero tolerance takes the guesswork and favoritism out of the “no-hug policy.”
It prompted Mr.Doon to pose the question:
How many people do they have to suspend before the community recognizes that this is completely ridiculous? If I was a student in that school, I’d organize a mass hug-in just to speed up the process.
An interesting proposal, yet Ufdionysus does not believe that a call for “civil disobedience” has any chance of success:
Unfortunately, very few students I’ve encountered in primary education are willing to commit civil disobedience. I tried such things and couldn’t get any solidarity. I found a lot of students scared to even put their names on a petition they agreed with. The school system is very good at making you scared to challenge authority.
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