This story is part of a series from The Hechinger Report and StateImpact Florida looking at how Florida schools are getting ready for Common Core standards. Read — and listen to — the first two stories here andhere.
It makes sense that Florida’s new K-12 math and language arts standards based on Common Core will mean changes for those classes.
But science, social studies – even gym classes – will also change when every grade starts using the standards this fall.
At Tampa’s Monroe Middle School, near MacDill Air Force base, science coach Janet Steuart said the standards are bringing changes to her classes too.
John O'Connor / StateImpact Florida
Monroe Middle School science teacher Andrea Groves works with a student. Many science classes will add more reading and writing assignments as Florida finishes the switch to new K-12 math and language arts standards this fall.
“There will be more emphasis on how you write in science,” Steuart said. “How you write with clarity. How you take a position; you defend it; you use evidence, pictures, text – whatever you have to defend it.”
Common Core outlines what students should know in math and English classes at the end of each grade. The emphasis on writing is the third, embedded set of standards within Common Core – literacy.
Common Core calls for students to read and write more outside of language arts classes. And they should pull evidence from their assignments to support their work.
That might mean more non-fiction books or reading historical or technical documents in addition to close readings of classic novels or poetry.
Steuart says there’s this writing assignment as an example.
“Defend the classification of the platypus as being a mammal,” she said. “What characteristics does it have that maybe it shouldn’t be? It lays eggs. So is there enough evidence that it should be a mammal or is there enough evidence that, no, we’ve got to revise that?”
For some districts the new emphasis on reading and writing will be a shock. A Common Core recommended reading list includes science texts about earthworms, the moon landing and Euclid’s treatise that is the basis of geometry.
But Hillsborough County schools have been adding reading and writing assignments to courses the past few years.
Seventh grade Civics teacher Tony Corbett says not much will change when Monroe Middle completes the switch to the new standards next school year.
“It just gives us 10 things to focus on that we’ve already been focusing on,” Corbett said. “They’re already supposed to be able to summarize. They’re already supposed to have vocabulary. They’re already supposed to do main idea. They’re already supposed to do primary documents. And that’s pretty much what the focus of Common Core is.”
Common Core will even mean changes for physical education classes. Teachers might need to work in math and writing assignments.
Some districts post vocabulary lists in the gym – or create math games.
It’s something Monroe Middle PE teacher Shane Knipple said he already does.
“We always try to integrate different subject areas as much as we can,” Knipple said. “A lot of science, and definitely a lot of math with scoring, counting and things of that nature.
Students running a mile outside on the track were calculating whether they were still on pace to finish in eight minutes.
Knipple said the changes Common Core will bring to PE classes are just good teaching.
“A lot of times in education they put things under different names when it’s something you’ve been doing all along,” he said. “True P.E. teachers that do what they’re supposed to do, I think we’re probably doing most of what we need to do already.
Monroe Middle gym teachers said they’ve been told more changes will happen over the next few years. But like teachers in other subjects, they’re confident they will be ready.
Many school districts don’t restrict contractors from using the data. And a federal privacy law was written prior to widespread Internet use and needs updating.
From the story:
Students shed streams of data about their academic progress, work habits, learning styles and personal interests as they navigate educational websites. All that data has potential commercial value: It could be used to target ads to the kids and their families, or to build profiles on them that might be of interest to employers, military recruiters or college admissions officers.
The law is silent on who owns that data. But Kathleen Styles, the Education Department’s chief privacy officer, acknowledged in an interview that much of it is likely not protected by FERPA — and thus can be commercialized by the companies that hold it.
Districts could write privacy protections into their contracts with ed tech companies. But few do.
A recent national study found that just 7 percent of the contracts between districts and tech companies handling student data barred the companies from selling it for profit.
The privacy concerns include big, new firms such as Knewton, and national non-profit efforts such as Code.org, which is encouraging kids to learn computer programming.
Students at the all-girls Ferrell Preparatory Academy in Tampa. Ariana Jerome, Shawna Kent, Elena Postlewait and Destiny Jackson all say they prefer their all-girls school to the co-ed schools they previously attended.
In the best-designed studies, Hyde found no evidence students benefit from single-gender education across 14 outcomes, including math performance, self-esteem, attitudes about math and science and more.
“Often it will work in the first year,” Hyde said, “because everybody’s enthusiastic about it. They recruit the best teachers, and so on. But after the first year, when the novelty wears off, it doesn’t really produce any benefits.”
Brown v. Board of Education—the Supreme Court decision declaring segregated schools are inherently unequal—turns 60 years old this weekend.
Earlier this week, we brought you memories from students and teachers who were there in the early days of desegregation.
And now, with decades of perspective, here are some of their reflections on the legacy of Brown:
Mamie Pinder
In 1963, Mamie Pinder was a first-time classroom teacher in the previously all-white Allapattah Elementary School. She taught fourth grade. Eventually, Pinder went on to be the first black woman to run for mayor of Miami.
“One day I spent the time asking each of my kids—who were black and white now—‘What color are you? What color are you?’ You get pink, brown, blue. Any color. You don’t get black or white from kids. Continue Reading →
Florida's education goals in math and reading currently vary by race.
Students and civil rights activists have asked Gov. Rick Scott to hold black and Hispanic students to a higher standard. The Southern Poverty Law Center and Dream Defenders were in Tallahassee this week to deliver a petition—with 5,800 signatures—protesting Florida’s race-based academic goals.
By the 2017/18 school year, the Florida Department of Education expects 92 percent of Asian students will pass their math tests at grade level. For Hispanic students, the goal is 80 percent. For black students, it’s 74 percent.
“We’re sending a message that we expect less of certain kids for no reason other than the color of their skin,” said Tania Galloni, the managing attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Florida office. She went to Tallahassee with students and other activists to bring the petition against the unequal standards.
“We know from decades of research that when you lower expectations for a group of people, people internalize that information,” said Galloni.
Two new national studies raise questions about the how accurate modern teacher evaluations are.
The first study, from the University of Southern California’s Morgan Polikoff and the University of Pennsylvania’s Andrew Porter, finds test-based evaluation scores have little to no link to other teacher quality measures, such as how well instruction matches standards and the content of assessments. Their study included data from Hillsborough County schools in Florida.
The scores are known as a value-added model, and use a statistical formula to predict how well a student should score on standardized tests based on past performance. If the student scores higher or lower than predicted, that difference is attributed to the classroom teacher.
Florida Department of Education
After analyzing the first year of data, the Florida Department of Education believes the state's teacher evaluation formula is sound.
Florida law requires teachers are evaluated based on a combination of how much student test scores improve and in-class observations. Florida is one of a growing number of states which requires school districts to pay teachers based on their evaluations.
Reinaldo Camacho finished his two-year degree from Miami Dade College while he was still in high school. He's the first member of his family to pursue post-secondary education.
Sixty students from the Hialeah area will graduate from high school this month like thousands of others in Florida, but these students have done something especially remarkable.
They’ll receive their high school diplomas almost a month after graduating from Miami Dade College.
The students took advantage of the dual-enrollment programs offered at Mater Academy and Mater Lakes Academy. These are publicly funded charter schools that operate independently of the district.
Both campuses have large immigrant populations.
“They’re located in Hispanic, working-class, low-income neighborhoods in Miami,” says Lynn Norman-Teck with the Florida Consortium of Public Charter Schools. “So the administrators really started pushing dual enrollment more as a cost saving program for these kids because they could get a lot of college credits out of the way.” Continue Reading →
Mamie Pinder, holds a photograph of herself as a young teaching student. Pinder, a retired Miami-Dade school teacher, began teaching in 1963, the year the school district began merging black and white students bodies and faculty.
This weekend marks the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education—the Supreme Court decision declaring separate schools were inherently unequal.
A recent ProPublica investigation found at least 300 school districts that are still under court-ordered desegregation. Eleven of those districts are in Florida.
Even though Miami-Dade County had those desegregation orders lifted relatively recently in 2001, it was an early state leader in desegregation, putting black and white children and black and white teachers in the same schools.
StateImpact Florida collected memories from some of those students and teachers.
A note to listeners, this story contains strong language: Continue Reading →
Lutz Elementary School teacher Mike Meiczinger uses Twitter to let people know what's happening in his class.
Lutz Elementary School teacher Mike Meiczinger noticed some parents weren’t using the class web site to keep track of what their students were doing.
So Meiczinger signed up for Twitter as another way to keep in touch. He still feels like a novice, but Meiczinger sees it as an instant messaging service for parents.
“I always tell my parents the child can never come home and say ‘Oh, we did nothing today,'” Meiczinger said. “That’s why I use it, so the parents know what’s new and fresh with the kids.”
We sat down with Senate Education Committee Chairman John Legg to talk about the recently completed legislative session.
Legg said it was a good year for schools, with the budget boosting per student funding and lawmakers adding more options for students who want to earn college credit while still in high school.
On the year’s most controversial proposal — expanding the private school tax credit scholarship program — Legg said the Senate gave up on its idea to require those students take the same statewide standardized test as public school students. But the final bill does require more auditing and should provide more data to assess how well the program is working.
Legg also talked about a proposal to make it easier for charter schools to open and what influence, if any, the governor’s race had on lawmaker decisions. Below are excerpts from the interview.
Q: You guys wrapped up the legislative session last week. You’re chairman of the education committee. I’m going to start — just give me a summary of what happened with education during the session?
A: It was a good year for education this year. We took on some big reforms, but what we did was the reforms that we did were based at the district level. We’ve allowed for some stability to take place, but also made adjustments on reforms that we’ve done over the last decade dealing with school grading, dealing with some acceleration. But all in all, it was a year of stability and a year of increased funding.
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