Jake Seiler had to put his plans to attend the University of South Florida on hold for a year to earn an associate's degree at Palm Beach State College because he didn't qualify for Bright Futures. His dad, Paul, calls changes to Bright Futures an "injustice."
Most new Palm Beach College Students were going through orientation earlier this month, but Jake Seiler was wrapping up his first three courses.
Despite earning the highest SAT scores of his two siblings — 1100, on six attempts — Seiler didn’t score high enough this year to earn the Bright Futures Florida Medallion scholarship his older sister got last year.
That’s becauseBright Futures, Florida’s lottery-funded college scholarship, has finished going through what supporters say is a fundamental change. The program has raised required test scores and become much more exclusive. Bright Futures is now exclusively a merit-based program and not focused on expanding access to higher education.
And that means students like Seiler, who once would have qualified for the scholarship with ease, no longer make the cut. And he isn’t alone.
Ron Frazier, CEO of BAC Funding Corporation, a non-profit that lends to minority-owned businesses, and a retired architect, helped lead the Urban League and NAACP review of school district contracts.
The Urban League of Miami and the local NAACP want the Miami-Dade school district to stop work on a $1.2 billion bond project to renovate schools and upgrade their technology.
The groups believe black-owned businesses aren’t getting a fair chance at school construction projects.
It was a district review of contracts — a legal requirement if the district wants to allocate contracts based on race or gender — which re-ignited the long-simmering dispute. The district review found black-owned businesses received a disproportionately larger share of district subcontracts.
Urban League and NAACP leaders questioned that conclusion and said the district couldn’t verify their numbers. So they launched their own review and released the results at a meeting Wednesday evening.
“We don’t believe what nobody tell us,” said T. Willard Fair, president of the Urban League of Greater Miami. “Because past experiences tell us that if we don’t stay on top of it, they have a…way of not remembering what they told us yesterday.”
Lily Eskelsen Garcia asks students what they want from the president on a visit to Allapattah Middle School last week.
At a Spanish restaurant in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, one of the most powerful women in education, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, pumps up union members by telling them where her career started – the cafeteria.
Thursday was her fourth day on the job. She started at 6 a.m. with a tour of the Keys by plane. She followed with visits to Allapattah Middle School and Hialeah High School in Miami-Dade County.
And she wrapped up a 12-hour day with a high-energy pitch for union members to get out and support Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist in his race against Republican Gov. Rick Scott.
“I like to say I was the lunch lady – that was my first job in a public school,” Eskelsen Garcia told about 50 members of the United Teachers of Dade. “That is padding my resume. I was the salad girl.
Students at the all-girls Ferrell Preparatory Academy in Tampa.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed federal complaints challenging single-gender education programs in Broward, Hernando and Volusia county schools.
The group argues single-gender programs violate anti-discrimination laws and are based on flawed science. The ACLU has previously filed a complaint against single-gender programs in Hillsborough County schools.
“Parents should know that their school districts are spending tens of thousands of dollars training teachers that boys and girls are so different that they have to be taught separately using radically different teaching methods,” ACLU attorney Amy L. Katz said in a statement. “This theory is based on junk science that has been soundly debunked by experts, and has never been shown to improve educational outcomes.”
The ACLU complaint alleges the group has found documents that outline different teaching methods for boys and girls. That violates federal Title IX laws, the group said.
Miami-Dade superintendent Alberto Carvalho, from right, Gov. Rick Scott and Southside Elementary principal Salvatore Schiavone tour the school last month.
Miami-Dade superintendent Alberto Carvalho said Florida leaders should rethink the scope and purpose of education testing and give schools more time to prepare for new math and language arts standards.
“Respectful accountability is a data tool of truth that enables and empowers appropriate intervention,” Carvalho wrote. “Simply relying on an “impression” of achievement is not enough, as history has taught us.”
Testing opponents quietly show support for speakers at Tuesday's Lee County school board meeting. The board voted 3-2 to reverse its state testing boycott.
The Lee County school board has reversed its decision to reject state tests, after board member Mary Fischer changed her mind.
Several news outlets reported that the crowd mostly opposed the use of state tests, but several speakers urged the district to reverse the decision and come up with another plan first. District superintendent Nancy Graham said she was concerned the decision could put the district’s $280 million in state funding at risk.
We’ve gathered a Storify from this morning’s meeting:
Ivan Bertaska, Anderson Lebadd and Edoardo Sarda run their robotic boat through the motions on the Intracoastal Waterway near Dania Beach.
On the Intracoastal Waterway near Dania Beach, Ivan Bertaska was getting ready to captain his vessel.
Bertaska wants to check the boat’s capabilities by having it speed up and slow down as it carves a wavy wake across the Intracoastal.
“The wave pattern actually gives me a good range of velocities,” he said, “so at first we go about two knots and then we get to the top corners where we’re making sharp turns we’re going about one knot. So I get a good operational range of the vehicle.
“We get a lot of funny looks from boaters.”
Funny looks because Bertaska and a team of other engineers are building a boat that can drive itself.
The team is from Florida Atlantic University and Villanova University in Philadelphia. It includes FAU student Edoardo Sarda and Villanova student Anderson Lebbad. They’re traveling to Singapore in October for the Maritime RobotX Challenge.
And they’re one of just three teams from the United States chosen for the competition.
Gov. Rick Scott at a reception for Step Up For Students, which oversees most of the state's tax credit scholarship program. The Florida Education Association is challenging the constitutionality of the scholarships.
When Florida first approved its private school tax credit scholarship program in 2001, Florida Education Association attorney Ron Meyer said education groups questioned the legality, but no one really objected to helping low-income students get out of low-performing schools.
But then the scholarship program started to grow. Lawmakers approved a law that automatically expanded the program each year. Then earlier this year, lawmakers raised the income cap. Now, a family of four earning $62,000 can receive a partial scholarship.
The program enrolls about 69,000 kids with a top scholarship value of just under $5,300.
“There comes a time when there’s a tipping point that’s reached,” Meyer said. “I think a lot of people turned a blind eye to the constitutional questions which were presented, even as this program was rolled out.”
The first step is an investigation by Education Commissioner Pam Stewart, according to the document posted by FSBA. If Stewart determines the district isn’t complying with state law, the State Board of Education can order the district to comply.
Lee County's school board is opting out of state testing. How many districts will follow?
Lee County’s school board became the first in the state Wednesday night to decide district students would no longer take statewide exams, according to the Fort Myers News-Press.
What happens next in uncertain.
State law requires school districts to participate in the statewide testing program. Those scores are used to determine grades for public schools, student promotions, high school graduation and teacher evaluation scores. Federal rules also require annual testing.
Lee County superintendent Nancy Morgan said she was concerned about the decision. The district’s attorney said school board members could be removed from office. From the News-Press story:
While the news was met with jubilation, Superintendent Nancy Graham said she was deeply concerned about the board’s decision.
“This will hurt children. There is no way around it,” Graham said while the audience booed. “I am gravely concerned about the decision that was made tonight, and I’ll try to make sense of this. It’s an interesting time to serve as the leader of this district.”
The meeting adjourned without discussion regarding what test – if any – will now be used in place of the state tests. The board members did not address if the decision will include charter schools.
Keith Martin, the board’s attorney, was not sure that there were any “immediate, clear” consequences to the action. He said it was possible the Governor could remove the school board members from their positions of power.
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