Michael Buckley is a best-selling children's author.
Children’s author Michael Buckley has spent a lot of time thinking about bullies. He’s the bestselling author of the NERDS series, which features a bunch of nerdy kids who deal with bullies during the school day and moonlight as top-secret superheroes the rest of the time.
“How hard it must be to be a teacher in the United States. Every four years some new knucklehead gets elected and then tells everybody that they’re doing their job completely wrong and we’re going to have to fix the whole educational system,” says Buckley. “So every four years I think writers for children have to evolve a little bit, too.”
Buckley spoke with StateImpact Florida about bullying, writing for school-aged children, how his son’s education is different from his own, and why Common Core emphasis on nonfiction in particular is changing expectations of children’s writers.
Your books deal a lot with school bullying. What has the response been from students reading this?
When I go to schools and I ask the kids, ‘who here thinks of themselves as a nerd?’—what I discover is that almost every kid is raising their hands.
Now that’s not something I would have admitted at all when I was a kid—I would never have confessed that I was a nerd even though I was a terrible nerd.
But today, to be a little different and a little awkward is almost like a badge of honor with these kids. And they really love the thing about them that makes them different. Continue Reading →
Every Florida grade is scheduled to switch to the new standards this fall. The standards outline what students should know at the end of each grade.
The political debate over the standards will continue in 2014, but more of the debate about the new standards will switch to implementation.
The Florida Association of District School Superintendents say they need more time to make the switch. They’re asking for an additional three years to gradually add more grades. They’d also like to throw out the school grading formula in favor of a new system measuring school progress.
The State Board of Education, lawmakers, Gov. Rick Scott and other education leaders will have to decide whether to stay on schedule or delay the final switch. They’ll also have to decide when Florida students will take the new exam tied to Common Core for the first time, now scheduled for early 2015.
Education Commissioner Tony Bennett is under criticism resigned his post on August 1. Pam Stewart was chosen to replace Bennett.
Here’s our pick for the biggest education stories of 2013 — a few of which will likely dominate 2014 as well.
Tony Bennett’s Resignation
Bennett came to Florida in January with a reputation as a rising star among self-proclaimed education reformers and a leading voice for the Common Core English, literacy and math standards fully adopted by 45 states. He also came on the heels of losing his reelection bid as Indiana’s state schools chief to Democrat Glenda Ritz.
Sheila Keenan, author of a new graphic novel for kids, called Dogs of War, says she tries not to think too much about classroom policies when she writes.
scholastic.com
Sheila Keenan is author of the new graphic novel, Dogs of War.
“Good storytelling is good storytelling,” says Keenan.
Her latest work is about the relationships between soldiers and dogs during World War I. World War II and the Vietnam War. It’s fiction, but she did a lot of research to make sure it was historically accurate.
Keenan sat down with StateImpact Florida earlier this year to talk about graphic novels, libraries, and how the Common Core State Standards influence her writing.
Q: How does the way that literature gets taught in schools influence how you think about the way you’re writing for children?
A: To be honest, I don’t think of that first. I’m really thinking about storytelling first because I believe that kids aren’t any different from adults as readers. We want to read good stories.
I think one of the added benefits of graphic novels—at least what I hear from librarians—is that they’re flying off the shelves. Kids really like them. I think it’s the appeal of the visuals first—even though that’s of course so hard to say as a writer. But nonetheless, kids live in a far more visually integrated world now than ever. I think graphic novels appeal to them because of that.
But for kids who are struggling as readers, or don’t see themselves as good readers, a graphic novel is an awesome entry point. They can just jump right into the story. Reading a graphic novel, because its sequential, it is modeling the reading process for someone who is not as adept at literacy as someone else. It’s a great thing for them. Continue Reading →
It is college-application season, which means high-school seniors across the country are scrambling to write personal statements, list all their extracurricular activities and take the SATs.
Wilson Sayre / WLRN
Sierra DuBose outside of Lotus House, the shelter where she lives.
Sierra DuBose is one of those seniors, enrolled at Miami Edison Senior High, but she is also one of almost 7,000 kids in the Miami-Dade public-school system who are homeless. That’s about 2 percent of the student population.
Sierra currently lives in a shelter for women called Lotus House, on the edge of Overtown.
The walls of her shared bedroom are painted bright pink, her favorite color. Her backpack lies on her bed, stuffed to the gills with homework and articles from all the clubs she’s in: yearbook, J-ROTC, and the school newsletter to name a few. The apartment has a full kitchen, which she hardly uses, and a special perk: a computer.
From Common Core, to Florida’s next standardized test and changes to high school graduation requirement, education was a top story time and again this year.
Here’s a selection of some of our most important, interesting and favorite education stories of 2013.
Click on the headlines to read the full story and listen to the broadcast versions.
John O'Connor / StateImpact Florida
Emma Jane Miller speaks against Common Core State Standards in October. She said standards developed with support from private groups is education without representation.
Florida’s education commissioner, Pam Stewart, moderated three hearings about the Common Core in Tampa, Davie and Tallahassee. The listening sessions came out of an executive order issued by Gov. Rick Scott. Along with the request for public input, the governor has been distancing Florida from its position as a leader in a consortium to create a Common Core-aligned test.
More than 750 people showed up to the listening sessions. Parents, teachers and activists all took their four minutes at the microphone to tell Florida’s education leaders what they think of the Common Core.
There were impassioned comments from speakers on both sides of the standards—many of whom stayed hours past when the listening sessions were scheduled to end.
New testing data shows Hillsborough County schools beat the performance of other large urban school districts in math and reading. Miami-Dade fourth grade readers outscored other large urban districts, but were on par in eighth grade reading and fourth and eighth grade math.
The results come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ sample of 21 large, urban school districts known as the Trial Urban District Assessment. The reading and math tests are given every other year to a sample of students in fourth and eighth grades.
The percentage of Hillsborough County students scoring proficient — a level of solid academic performance, as defined by NAEP — beat the national average for large, urban districts on all four exams. A higher percentage of Miami-Dade fourth graders scored proficient or better than the national average for large, urban districts.
Neither Miami-Dade nor Hillsborough County had a statistically significant score increase on any of the four tests.
“The NAEP scores are the best data available for making valid comparisons,” Hillsborough schools superintendent MaryEllen Elia said in a statement, “so it’s very gratifying to see our students performing at the highest levels compared to their peers in many of the nation’s largest school districts. It’s great to see our hard work paying off. The students, their teachers, and their parents should be very proud.”
The Florida Department of Education released 2013 high school grades, part of the state’s school accountability system. The data includes each component of the school’s score and demographic data. Continue reading →
Nearly half of Florida high schools — 48 percent — earned an A grade on the state’s report card, according to a report Florida Department of Education released Wednesday.
That’s up from 31 percent of high schools earning a top grade two years ago. More than 80 percent of Florida high schools earned an A or B grade.
That performance triggers automatic changes to the school grading system next year, raising the number of points required to earn each grade. This is the first time the 2011 State Board of Education rule has been required.
“This is appropriate,” education commissioner Pam Stewart said on a conference call with reporters. “We are very proud of the work our high schools have done.” The requirement does not change the point scale for elementary and middle school grades.
Brothers Rodney Jones and Tremain McCreary attend the school that will no longer be named Nathan B. Forrest High School
When Rodney Jones and Tremain McCreary walked to school on Tuesday morning, the brothers were headed to the same classrooms, to sit next to the same students, in a building with the same façade it had on Monday.
But it was not the same school they had gone to the day before.
“It’s a relief to me to know the school name had changed—I was thinking about it: how do we have a KKK leader’s name for our school?” says Jones.
“Things are changing around this school,” says McCreary.
On Monday night, the Duval County Public School Board voted unanimously to rename Nathan B. Forrest High School.
Forrest High was originally named for Nathan Bedford Forrest—the Civil War general and first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
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