Hearings on Common Core State Standards are scheduled for next week.
The Foundation for Florida’s Future and Foundation for Excellence in Education, influential and public supporters of shared English, literacy and math standards known as Common Core, won’t be present at three public meetings next week debating the standards.
Foundation spokeswoman Allison Aubuchon said staff would likely not attend the three three-hour meetings in Tampa, Davie and Tallahassee scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday next week.
“While we wish we could be there personally, I don’t think we’ll actually have a team member on the ground.” Aubuchon said. “Our grassroots team has been encouraging folks to attend.”
Gov. Rick Scott asked the department to hold the hearings last month. Scott wants the public to present concerns about specific Common Core standards. Florida is one of 45 states which have adopted the standards, which outline what students should know in English and math at the end of each grade. Florida is transitioning to the standards now, which will be used in every grade starting next fall.
The University of South Florida and the University of Central Florida earned the highest scores on a new performance funding formula.
Florida universities can start making plans to spend two new pots of money lawmakers created earlier this year.
The University of Central Florida and the University of South Florida earned the highest scores — and therefore the most money — in the first round of performance-based funding for state universities. The Board of Governors said they released the money to schools Wednesday.
State universities will split $20 million based on how well they did in three measures: percentage of bachelor’s graduates employed or back in school a year later; average full-time wage for graduates a year after earning their degree; and average institutional cost per undergraduate. Schools earned between zero and three points depending on how well they did (see the chart below).
UCF and USF both earned six points, 13 percent of the 46 total points scored by state universities. Those scores earned UCF and USF 13 percent of the $20 million pot, or $2.6 million each.
At the start of last school year there were about 15,000 fewer full-time jobs in Florida public schools than there were in 2007. Almost all of those jobs — 99.5% — are support staff positions like custodians, secretaries and classroom aides.
A new Florida law asks schools to crack down on online bullying.
Florida schools are running into a handful of problems as they try to carry out the state’s new law targeting online or electronic bullying, according to testimony at a Senate committee meeting today.
Florida lawmakers approved HB 609 in May. The bill defines online, or cyber, bullying, and allows school districts to investigate if off-campus online bullying affects a student’s school work and life.
Sam Foerster, a deputy chancellor with the Florida Department of Education, said school districts have learned its hard to keep up with kids these days, technologically.
“The ever-evolving landscape of social media presents some challenges,” Foerster told lawmakers. “By the time a specific type of social media has become well understood by the grown ups in the building, very often it has lost favor with the young people.”
Overall, more than half of teachers think the standards, adopted by Florida and 44 other states, will have a positive effect on students. About one-third said the standards will not change much, while 8 percent said the standards will have a negative effect.
Common Core is a multi-state effort that outlines what students should know at the end of each grade. The standards also emphasize analytical thinking, asking students what they know and to prove how they know it.
The Common Core hearings planned for next week are not everything critics had wanted.
Florida’s Common Core hearings aren’t until next week, but the criticism has already started.
In September, Gov. Rick Scott asked Florida to sever its financial ties to a consortium of states–the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC–that’s developing a new assessment based on Common Core standards. At the time, Scott said he wanted to listen to parents’ concerns and hold town hall meetings on the Common Core.
Maxwell wrote his column as an open letter. He said he no longer trusts Florida leaders about education after they have cut essential subjects and punished schools for low performance — except when too many low grades would look bad for the state grading system.
There are fewer custodians and support staff in Florida public schools than there were in 2007.
A StateImpact Florida analysis of jobs in Florida public schools shows that while full-time staffing is almost back to pre-recession levels, one group of employees hasn’t come back: the support staff.
Since the recession began, Florida’s public school budgets have been hit with more than $2 billion dollars in cuts from state and federal funding, decreased property tax revenue and sequestration. StateImpact has been following the resulting layoffs and hard choices in schools across the state.
But at the start of last school year there were still about 15,000 fewer full-time jobs in Florida public schools than there were in 2007. Almost all of those jobs — 99.5% — are support staff positions. Custodians, secretaries, classroom aides—there just aren’t as many people filling those roles anymore.
LISTEN: WHAT IT MEANS TO LOSE SUPPORT STAFF
You can see a breakdown of year-to-year full-time employment numbers in Florida public schools here:
[Joan Cooper] says she’d rather the district take the money that would be spent on new stationery, signage and the like and spend it on things students actually need.
Proponents of the name change included 67 year old Wells Todd who moved to Jacksonville from Missouri 10 years ago. … “So you have people come here tonight who (say) you’ve got to keep the name, you’ve got to keep the name. It’s our tradition,” Todd said. “Was lynching a tradition? Tar and feathering a tradition? Dragging people onto chain gangs a tradition? Economic exploitation a tradition?”
Florida Parents Against Common Core protested a national meeting discussing the standards in Orlando in June.
The Florida Department of Education will hold public hearings on Common Core State Standards in Tampa, Davie and Tallahassee on consecutive days later this month, according to an email from House Majority Leader Steve Crisafulli.
Gov. Rick Scott asked the department to hold the hearings last month. Scott wants the public to present concerns about specific Common Core standards. Florida is one of 45 states which have adopted the standards, which outline what students should know in English and math at the end of each grade.
Florida is three years in to implementing the standards, which are scheduled to be used in every classroom starting next fall. But Scott said he wants to listen to community concerns about the standards. Activists on the political right and left have opposed the standards because of concerns about quality, loss of local control, cost, testing, data collection and more.
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