This is what the first day of summer feels like for some folks.
School’s out for summer across Florida.
In honor of the much-anticipated break, we asked teachers, students and administrators to describe that first day out of the classroom by filling in the blank: The first day of summer is like ____.
For some, it’s a welcome respite.
For others, it’s the beginning of the next school year.
Check out the responses in the Storify below. Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments.
Our partners at WLRN put together a special education hour of the Sunshine Economy this week. The conversation ranged from a talk with Broward County’s superintendent about Common Core to a chat with a group of high school students about diversity in the classroom:
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School's out for summer.
In this edition of The Sunshine Economy:
The school year may be over, but the next chapter in public education begins in less than three months: Common Core State Standards.
However, Florida public school kids won’t follow Common Core, at least not in name. The state has dubbed the standards “Florida Standards.” Still, the principles of Common Core remain: more rigorous education standards to better prepare students for college and careers.
The employment stakes of education are huge. In May, the U.S. job market marked a milestone. The number of jobs created since the recession ended is now equal to the number of jobs lost during the economic collapse. But the recovery is lumpy to say the least. The job gains are concentrated among those with at least some college education. The number of people who have solely a high school diploma or less and a job remains well below what it was before the recession. Continue Reading →
A summer job used to cover more of college than it does now.
A summer job for a college student isn’t what it used to be.
Anya Kamenetz from NPR’s education team explored the economics of rising college costs over the years—and the comparatively creeping change in minimum wage. What she found is that a summer job just doesn’t cover what it used to:
“Let’s look at the numbers for today’s public university student. They’ve all changed in the wrong direction. In 2013-2014, the full cost of attendance for in-state students was $18,391. The maximum Pell Grant didn’t keep pace with that. It’s $5,550. That leaves our hypothetical student on the hook for $12,841.”
You canread the full storyhere and listen to the conversation from All Things Considered:
Leslie Augustin, 13, an eighth-grade student in the guitar class, gets individual attention from Jonathan De Leon, founder of the guitar program at the school.
When Jonathan De Leon left his home state of New Jersey to teach at North Miami Middle School in 2007, he immediately saw possibility — both in the school and the students.
A post-graduate teaching job in an affluent neighborhood in Philadelphia quickly convinced De Leon that North Miami Middle — persistently a low-achieving school, according to the Education Transformation Office, an arm of Miami-Dade Schools that supports targeted schools — was the place he could make a significant impact.
When he arrived, De Leon says he remembers a “nonexistent” music program with no instrumental electives and an over-enrolled chorus class, the only option available.
“I started here in 2007 as a social studies teacher and it was both challenging and wonderful,” said De Leon, 28. “Teaching history was great, but my passion has always been music.”
That passion gave impetus to what administrators, teachers and students at the school are calling a culture change: a transformation that started with the music program.
Correction: An earlier version of this story identified Michael Kamen as the director of the the film, Mr. Holland’s Opus. He in fact is the composer who wrote the film score.
Students man a computer help desk at Ocoee High School and assist classmates. The school has to end the program because of a state requirement for end-of-course exams.
A recurring theme in Florida education is that policies intended to address separate issues can and do conflict with each other.
The number of Florida schools required to add an extra hour of reading instruction will increase this fall.
Florida will expand the number of schools required to add an extra hour of reading instruction this fall, Education Week reports.
Two years ago lawmakers required the 100 elementary school with the lowest scores on the state reading test to add an extra hour for reading. Now, the 300 lowest-scoring schools will have to add time.
Nearly half of teachers in Orange County schools missed at least 11 days of school — which NCTQ says is “frequently absent” — while 30 percent of Hillsborough County teachers missed that number of days.
Nationally, teachers were in their classrooms 94 percent of the time. The average teacher missed 11 days of school. Jacksonville and Orlando teachers missed more time, on average, while Tampa teachers missed less time than the study’s average teacher.
But the study found that teachers at high-poverty schools were not more likely to miss time than teachers at lower-poverty schools.
NCTQ collected 2012-2013 teacher absence data from 40 of 51 school districts in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. The study excluded teachers who had long-term absences due to illness or family reasons. Miami-Dade schools did not provide the data as requested by NCTQ, and were not included in the study.
“While these big city school districts are struggling to improve student achievement, they may be overlooking one of the most basic aspects of teacher effectiveness: every teacher being regularly on the job, teaching kids,” NCTQ president Kate Walsh said in a statement.
Thomas McNabb points out the changes made to an Ocoee High School science classroom, part of a $14 million program at seven schools to test the best ways to upgrade school technology.
Ocoee High School just west of Orlando opened less than a decade ago. But technology-wise, the 2,300-student school is already obsolete.
Ocoee is part of $14 million project to outfit seven Orange County schools with fast, wireless Internet and new classroom technology.
The first step was ripping out and replacing miles of fiber optic cable and adding devices teachers could use with their lessons.
Orange County schools’ infrastructure director Thomas McNabb walked through a science classroom, pointing out the changes.
The district added an interactive board at the front of the classroom and and a speaker system to amplify the teacher.
“It may or may not have had wireless, it just depended,” McNabb said. “There were 50 or 70 wireless access points throughout the building. The classroom amplification system was not in play here. All of that was nonexistent at…the end of last school year.”
Orange County schools are preparing for two technology-related deadlines. Florida lawmakers are requiring half of all classroom instruction is delivered digitally by 2015.
But the first deadline comes early next year when Florida students take a new suite of online exams. Millions of U.S. students will join them.
The tests are tied to the new Common Core standards fully adopted by 44 states.
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