Former Gov. Jeb Bush visited a Hialeah charter school for National School Choice Week.
The national Republican fight over Common Core math and language arts standards is over, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others supporting the standards have lost.
Pew Research Center data shows “business conservatives” and “steadfast conservatives” — two designations Pew assigns in its poll — both oppose the standards equally. More than 60 percent of both groups said they oppose the standards.
This is very bad news for the standards’ supporters. Right-leaning supporters of Common Core say the standards are a state issue, created for states and by states (and that they wish Education Secretary Arne Duncan would stop talking about them). Opponents argue that the US Education Department’s efforts to get states to adopt the standards are an example of federal overreach.
Pew makes it clear: The opponents won. No matter how much supporters talk about state-led initiatives, the standards have been defined…
But now Bush’s support for the Common Core can’t be waved away as picking a side in an active intraparty controversy. Bush is backing an initiative that his party broadly opposes. Jindal didn’t turn on the Common Core to burnish his credentials with the most conservative Republicans. He did it to win over the mainstream.
Shawn Cerra, principal of J.P. Taravela High School in Coral Springs, with the school's guidance director, Jody Gaver in 2012.
A national foundation thinks school principals have more to learn.
The Wallace Foundation believes that the people who supervise principals spend too much time making sure they follow rules and procedures — and not enough time mentoring them.
Broward County is one of the districts training more “principal supervisors” — and giving them fewer job duties.
Desmond Blackburn leads Broward County schools’ performance and accountability efforts. He said the county started reorganizing principal supervision a few years ago. It’s why the district applied for the Wallace Foundation grant.
“The job was budget, parent, community concerns, social services, field trips, leases, reassignments — a great deal of operational points,” he said. “And teaching and learning became what we got involved in when everything else was accomplished.”
Veterans living in Florida can get in-state tuition at state colleges and universities starting Tuesday.
Veterans will pay less to attend Florida colleges and universities starting Tuesday, one of a handful of laws taking effect at the start of a new budget year.
The Florida GI bill means any veteran living in the Sunshine State only has to pay in-state tuition. That tuition is typically one-third the cost of out-of-state rates.
Our colleague at WUSF and Off The Base, Bobbie O’Brien, wrote about what else is in the bill — including scholarships for Florida National Guard members — when Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill in April:
$1.5 million in scholarships for Florida National Guard members
$12.5 million to renovate and upgrade National Guard facilities
$7.5 million to buy land surrounding MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, and Naval Support Activity in Panama City.
It waives state professional licensing fees for veterans up to five years after discharge.
It grants a waiver to active-duty military family members, spouses and dependents, so they don’t have to obtain a Florida drivers license to get a job or attend public schools in the state.
It establishes Florida Is For Veterans, a new nonprofit corporation, to promote the hiring of veterans and to get veterans to move to the state.
It also requires the state’s tourism arm, Visit Florida, to spend $1 million a year marketing to veterans.
It establishes the Florida Veterans’ Walk of Honor and Florida Veterans’ Memorial Garden in Tallahassee.
Broward County schools have won a Wallace Foundation grant to study the best ways to supervise principals.
Broward County schools have won a multimillion dollar, five-year grant to help improve supervision of district principals.
The grant is part of a $30 million nationwide effort from the Wallace Foundation to focus on a little-noticed slice of school administration in 14 urban districts. The foundation hopes districts spend more time developing principals’ school leadership skills.
“In many large school districts, principal supervisors oversee too many principals – 24 on average – and focus too much on bureaucratic compliance,” Jody Spiro, the Wallace Foundation’s director of education leadership, said in a statement. “This new initiative aims to help districts move principal supervisors’ focus to one of support, freeing them to better coach and develop principals to help them improve instruction.”
Generally, graduates with science degrees were more likely to earn more in their first year of employment after college.
But which school’s graduates earned the most money? Check out these charts created with report data. First, bachelor degrees:
Economic Security Report / Florida Department of Education
Graduates earning bachelor degrees from Florida International University and Florida Atlantic University had the highest median income in their first year of work.
Sixty years after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, not all classrooms reflect the dream of desegregation.
Here’s a question:How do you teach a class of all black students in an all black school that Brown v. Board of Education ended segregation decades ago?
That isn’t a hypothetical question, but one I remember clearly asking myself. I was teaching American History for the first time in one of our nation’s many embarrassingly homogeneous schools. I could not, with a straight face, teach my students that segregation had ended. They’d think that either they or I didn’t know what the word segregation meant.  Continue Reading →
The median earnings of Florida associate in arts graduates was $26,504 in their first year, while the median bachelor’s graduate (not divided by arts and science) earnings was $33,652. Nursing, accounting and teaching graduates earned the highest median pay among bachelor’s graduates. For bachelor degrees earned at Florida colleges, the median pay was highest for nursing, computer and information technology and dental hygienists.
The median associate in science earnings was $45,060, with emergency medical technicians, nursing and physical therapy the most lucrative fields.
The University of Florida’s education school and a UF graduate also teamed up on a project, creating the online Algebra Nation. Algebra Nation is a combination of online videos, traditional workbooks and an always-available online network of professionals and peers able to help students solve for Y.
Algebra Nation surveyed teachers about what they wanted, said Ethan Fieldman, the founder of a tutoring firm that helped launch Algebra Nation. Most teachers weren’t happy with the available online videos and wanted something more tailored for Florida’s math standards.
“Khan Academy videos are nice,” Fieldman said, “but they’re boring, and the students want to connect with real people…that they can see on the screen.”
The percentage of students passing all four of Florida's end-of-course exams increased last school year.
More Florida students passed the state’s final exams for algebra, biology, geometry and U.S. history, according to test results released Monday.
The tests, known as end-of-course exams, are required by state law. Students must pass the Algebra 1 end-of-course exam to graduate high school.
State leaders were pleased with the results.
“I think that is just a testimony to the great work that’s being done in our districts and in our schools and in our classrooms,” said Education Commissioner Pam Stewart.
The biggest improvement was on the U.S. History exam. Two-thirds of students passed the exam on their first attempt, an increase of 10 percentage points. Stewart said the increase might be because students enrolled in Advanced Placement history classes took the test to earn the state’s new scholar designation on their diploma.
On the required algebra test, 65 percent of students taking the test for the first time passed — and increase of one percentage point. But ninth graders are the largest group of students taking the algebra test, and the percentage of high school freshmen passing the exam held steady at 52 percent.
We’ll find out today if those numbers improved when the Florida Department of Education releases this year’s end-of-course results.
But Pinellas County schools aren’t waiting. Hundreds of incoming ninth graders will return to class this week to begin a six-week summer Algebra 1 boot camp.
About two-thirds of Pinellas County ninth graders did not pass the Algebra 1 end-of-course exam given last spring.
Students will use a computerized curriculum which will let them spend less time on concepts they understand, and more time on lessons they struggle with.
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