Florida’s A through F system for school grades has been fraught with controversy.
Supporters say it’s a way of holding schools and districts accountable. Critics worry that the formula to calculate the grades doesn’t reflect how well schools really prepare children.
Now, in Miami-Dade County, one school has been told it probably won’t get the A it says it earned. Continue Reading →
The Education Fund in Miami is hosting an online chat about getting ready for college.
The Education Fund in Miami is hosting an online chat today about the best ways for first generation and low-income students to earn a college degree.
Lisa Ciacci, the Education Fund’s Smart Path to College program manager, will be on Twitter ready to answer questions. Advisers from similar programs in San Francisco and Philadelphia will also be online.
Tweet your questions to @educationfund and #assetmap. You can also follow along at TweetChat. The conversation begins at 2 p.m.
Ferrell Preparatory Academy students 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.
We asked Karen French the principal of all-girls Ferrell Preparatory Academy, a public middle school in Tampa, about the differences in single-gender and traditional schools.
Q: I assume you’ve taught at both co-ed schools and now a single-gender school? Is that right?
A: That is correct.
Q: Tell me a little bit about what the differences are?
A: The main difference – and this is, like, year 21 for me and this is the third with doing single-gender. I’ve taught all within middle. The main difference that I see is the area of focus that the students have…how much more focused they are in class, how much more they’re willing to volunteer, how much more risk-taking that they will take within that.
Part of that is the environment of what we are setting here, but being that it’s a single-gender environment that helps to support that preparatory environment that we’re building.
With state schools making the full transition to Common Core language arts, literacy and math standards, the group says Florida should modernize the nation’s oldest school grading formula.
“Now’s the perfect time to improve the system based on what we’ve learned from the last decade of school grading,” said president Trey Csar.
Among their recommendations:
Measure student test score growth over multiple years — Right now the state measure one year of growth. Multiple years would reduce the amount the year-to-year swings that sometimes effect student test results and grades.
Broaden the score ranges for each letter grade — This would prevent small increases or decreases in school scores from resulting in a change of several letter grades.
Florida is one of 45 states to adopt the Common Core State Standards, which outline what students should know at the end of each grade. The common standards mean states using the same standardized test will be able to compare results.
Many of the conference call questions focused on copyright issues and the so-called “15 percent” rule for adding changes to the standards.
Why does that matter? Because it speaks to whether the state actually controls the education standards. Critics worry adopting Common Core will mean Florida has less control over classroom material.
Our friends at StateImpact Indiana looked at this issue last year. Here’s the short answer, according to Achieve, a non-profit which helped develop the standards.
“Here’s what we’re going to ensure: These are Florida standards,” Scott said. “They’re not some national standards; they’re going to be Florida standards. This is our state. We’re not going to have the federal government telling us how to do our education system.”
Gage Skidmore / Flickr
Gov. Rick Scott used to support Common Core. Now he's concerned about federal government control over Florida education policies.
The proposed revisions to the standards would add calculus (using Florida’s current calculus standards), teach elementary students decimals using money, require elementary students learn cursive writing and allow kindergarten teachers to provide more guidance as students try to identify authors or answer questions about unknown words.
But mostly, the changes do some copy editing to clarify objectives.
So is Florida abandoning Common Core?
Education experts said no. So did Common Core critics.
The Florida Department of Education wants to make some edits to the Common Core State Standards.
POST UPDATED: Monday the Florida Department of Education unveiled a list of suggested changes to the state’s K-12 language arts, literacy and math standards.
“With your input, we have strengthened our standards to ensure they are the best and highest standards,” education commissioner Pam Stewart said in a statement, “so that all Florida students graduate from high school prepared for success in college, career and in life.”
Gov. Rick Scott also praised the changes last week.
The standards are known as Common Core, and have been fully adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia. The standards are being used in kindergarten through second grade now, and every grade is scheduled to use Common Core when classes start this fall.
But opponents — conservative and liberal — have criticized the standards. They pushed Scott to call for public hearings. The changes recommended Monday came from those public hearings and comments submitted online.
The Florida Department of Education has released a list of suggested changes to Florida's Common Core standards.
The Florida Department of Education has released a list of proposed changes to the state’s K-12 standards, known as Common Core.
The list includes 13 changes to the English language arts standards and 33 changes to the math standards, nine of which are new standards.
Many of the changes were suggested by teachers.
Florida is one of 45 states to fully adopt Common Core, which outlines what students should know at the end of each grade. But the standards have been criticized from both the right and the left over concerns about reducing local control, the quality of the standards and other issues.
One focus of the changes is making sure the standards are appropriate for elementary school students, particularly kindergarteners. One change would no longer require kindergarteners to have to know the author’s name, for instance.
These boys are part of the All Male E.A.G.L.E. Academy at Bond Elementary School in Tallahassee. The acronym stands for Extraordinary Ambitious Gentlemen Leading in Excellence.
A handful of public schools in Florida have either all-girls or all-boys classrooms. More could be coming.
“With the idea that children all learn differently, this is a way that we can provide those parents – that don’t have the resources to send their students to a private school or a parochial school that has a gender specific setting – a local public school where they have access to it,” Diaz said.
A handful of public schools around the state already have single sex classrooms.
Lawmakers required the extra hour of instruction for three school years, beginning in 2012-2013.
The OPPAGA review looked at 96 schools (1 closed prior to the 2012-2013 school year, while three others closed after 2012-2013 school year). The review asked three questions:
Did the schools move off the low-performing list?
Do test results show student reading improving?
Are students as schools with the required extra hour of instruction improving more than peers at schools which don’t have the extra hour?
The report found the answer to the first two questions was yes, and more limited success on the third question.
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