Wyrosdick said the school district has invested about $3.5 million to buy and upgrade infrastructure to meet the minimum specifications for testing systems. The standards are required but not funded by the Florida Department of Education, so a recent half-cent sales tax has financed the purchases.
There are other problems, too. Guidelines that dictate how far apart students taking the test must sit mean that in a close-quarter computer lab, not every available computer can be utilized.
Scheduling is a big problem because most classrooms aren’t outfitted with enough computers to conduct a standardized test, said Bill Emerson, Santa Rosa County assistant superintendent for curriculum, instruction and assessment.
“It used to be if we had 300 kids taking the FCAT, we’d put them all in the cafeteria,” he said. “Now it takes 10 different classrooms to do that. And most of our schools don’t have 10 computer labs.
Randy Avent, left, shakes hands with Florida Polytechnic Board of Trustees Chair Rob Gidel.
Randy Avent has a career of turning research into new defense, computer science and life science projects.
Florida Polytechnic’s Board of Trustees said they want Avent to inspire future entrepreneurs at the Polk County campus.
Avent was the board’s unanimous choice for the university’s first president.
“Dr. Avent personifies the innovative, entrepreneurial qualities that we hope to inspire in our future students,” Board of Trustees Chair Rob Gidel said in a statement. “As an institution focused on hands-on learning, we’re proud to welcome Dr. Avent, who has impressive experience and demonstrated commitment to applied research and academics.”
Avent is the associate vice chancellor of research development at North Carolina State University. He’s also led research for the Department of Defense and worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Labortory.
Avent will now negotiate a contract with the university, which the Lakeland Ledger reported is expected to come with a salary between $310,750 to $550,000. And the Florida Board of Governors must approve Avent’s selection.
Florida’s 12th university is scheduled to open in August.
Florida schools are scheduled to complete the switch to new K-12 math and language arts standards based on Common Core this fall. New standards will require a new test.
FCAT is going away — with one exception. Fifth and eighth grade students will still take the FCAT science exam. Florida State University physics professor Paul Cottle noted the exam will stagger on:
.@StateImpactFL Not correct. The Science FCAT at grades 5 and 8 will continue on, zombie-like.
Photo by Norm Robbie (Flickr) / Illustration by Sammy Mack
This is the last year Florida students will sit for the FCAT.
The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test is dying, say Florida education officials. By this time next year, the FCAT will be replaced with a new, Common Core-aligned assessment.
FCAT was born in 1995 in the humid June of a Tallahassee summer.
The Florida Commission on Education Reform and Accountability under Gov. Lawton Chiles gave birth to the test. It was part of a series of recommendations that were meant to give local districts more control and a better sense of how their schools were doing.
“At some point we may look fondly at the FCAT and wish we had it back,” says Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association — the umbrella organization for Florida’s teachers unions.
Eventually, Ford and the FEA would become outspoken rivals of FCAT, but the relationship didn’t sour immediately.
“It gave me information as a classroom teacher,” recalls Ford. “Unfortunately it was used as a political football to be the decision-maker for every decision that anybody wanted to tie to a test.”
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In a column written for the Tampa Bay Times, Elia notes the school district has 85 to 100 medical emergencies requiring an ambulance every most months. She said the investigation found no criminal conduct, but that the school district has learned from Isabella Herrera’s death:
Despite testimony from several medical experts, there is no conclusive opinion as to whether different decisions on the bus would have yielded a different outcome. Regardless, our school district has worked to improve the reliability of our bus radio system and bolstered training for drivers, emphasizing that bus drivers can and should use their personal cellphones to call 911 when warranted. We have reached out for input from parents and professionals to see how we could improve services for special needs children — and have made multiple changes based on that input.
At the April 1 School Board meeting, at which the $800,000 settlement was finalized, Isabella’s mother made an impassioned plea to board members and to the school district to keep her daughter in mind when we make decisions regarding the most vulnerable among our students. I know that board members have taken those words to heart — and I certainly have.
About half as many students will qualify for Bright Futures scholarships when the school year begins this fall as did during the current year, according to new estimates from the Florida College Access Network.
That’s because lawmakers have steadily increased requirements for the primarily lottery-funded scholarships, raising minimum scores required on the SAT and ACT college entrance exams. Graduates must score at least 1170 on the SAT or 26 on the ACT to qualify for a scholarship this fall. That’s up from 970 on the SAT and 20 on the ACT in the 2008-2009 school year.
Florida College Access Network
The Florida College Access Network estimates about half as many students will qualify for Bright Futures this fall.
One in three high school graduates qualified for the scholarships in 2009. This fall, just one in eight graduates are estimated to meet new minimum required scores.
“The value and need for a highly skilled and educated workforce have been highly touted by our state’s leaders in Tallahassee this session,” Florida C.A.N.! senior researcher Troy Miller said in a statement. “If these sweeping cuts to financial aid are enforced as scheduled, our state will find itself at a competitive disadvantage.”
It’s report card day at Miami Carol City Senior High, and sophomore Mack Godbee is reviewing his grades with his mentor, Natasha Santana-Viera.
The first quarter on Godbee’s report card is littered with Ds and Fs. This quarter, there are more Cs and Bs. He’s got an A in English.
“Congratulations on that,” says Santana-Viera. “When you need help, do you know where to go?”
“Straight to y’all,” says Godbee.
Lots of teachers talk to their students about their report cards. But this conversation is the result of a school initiative to monitor student data—looking for dropout risk before the obvious signs that a student is struggling. It’s part of a national program called Diplomas Now, which operates in several schools in Florida.
Talking to Godbee about his report card and his goals for the next quarter is just one piece of a strategic plan to make sure he stays in school.
Florida lawmakers are currently considering a proposed bill that would, among other things, create similar early warning systems in middle schools to flag students who are at risk of dropping out.
While both budgets would set a record for total state education spending, both budget fall short of the per-student high water mark of $7,126 set during the the 2007-2008 school year.
Schools are also likely to receive more money for maintenance after several years with almost nothing in the state budget to fix roofs, replace equipment and take care of other long-term repairs. The House budget includes $50 million for district school maintenance, while the Senate includes $40 million.
This is the second year New York has used a home-grown test to assess its Common Core standards. The protests started last year and seem to be picking up steam in 2014.
Advocates of “opting out” of New York’s tests estimate that parents have chosen to withhold more than 30,000 students from the tests this year. Chalkbeat reported the number of students opting out of state tests in New York City schools has increased to nearly 640, up from 276 last year. And advocates argue that number could exceed more than 1,000 students.
Jon Hage heads the for-profit charter school management company, Charter Schools USA (CSUSA), based in Fort Lauderdale. The company operates 58 schools in seven states across the country, including Florida.
Hage grew up in middle-class Oakland Park near Fort Lauderdale. He served in the United States Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserves as a commissioned officer in the Special Forces (Green Berets). After then doing policy work in Washington D.C. and Tallahassee, he founded CSUSA in 1997.
Q: What was your first job?
A: I was a custodian at Nova High School between 10th and 11th grade. I cleaned toilets, mopped floors and scraped the gum off the bottom of desks. This taught me early on to respect property (I still have a pet peeve of making sure kids don’t stick their gum under a desk!) and to never be too proud to do any task required of me.
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