Senate Education Chairman: Legislative Session Will Focus On Common Core, School Grades, Evaluations

The Florida Senate

Sen. John Legg, R-Port Richey, says lawmakers need some advice from education commissioner Pam Stewart on Wednesday.

Wednesday the Florida Legislature will start in on the heavy lifting of this year’s session with regard to education policy.

The Senate Education Committee has asked education commissioner Pam Stewart to outline the agency’s plan and update lawmakers on where things stand with the final switch to new K-12 English language arts and math standards (scheduled for this fall), choosing a new standardized test to mostly replace the FCAT (first use scheduled for early 2015), upgrading school technology, teacher evaluations and more.

StateImpact Florida recently sat down with Legg to talk about the session.

“We’re going to kind of jump in to the deep end of the pool in January,” Legg said. “Those issues…will probably dominate the legislative session.”

Legg said Wednesday’s meeting will be key for lawmakers setting their agenda for the upcoming session. Legg said lawmakers could plan what they will and won’t do during the session based on what Stewart says.

Click to listen to the interview.