Florida teachers are benefiting from resources about Common Core through CPALMS.
As states start phasing in Common Core standards in public school classrooms, no Common Core textbooks have been written yet, and new assessments are still being developed.
Florida lawmakers will have to ask themselves how much security the state can afford for schools.
Reinforced entry gates.
School resource officers in elementary schools.
Teachers with guns.
Politicians, pundits and school officials have tossed around ideas how to beef up security since the horrific school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut last month.
The Florida Legislature will be asked to increase security funding for school districts when it convenes in March.
But there’s a split in the way states will measure what students have learned. Two different testing systems are on the table.
One test will average a series of test results to determine a student’s score. The other is a single, adaptive test which tailors questions based on a student’s past answers.
The tests are being designed now for use by 2014-15.
Mrs. Kenton and her kindergarten students discuss a story about a gingerbread man. Under Common Core, the students must be able to show they comprehend what they're reading.
Editor’s note: Reporter Martha Dalton with NPR affiliate WABE-FM in Atlanta contributed to this report.
“The story was about a gingerbread man getting loose in the school.”
Kindergarteners in Katherine Kenton’s class at Tallahassee’s Gilchrist Elementary School are learning to read using the new Common Core standards.
The students have to show they understand what they’re reading.
“The gingerbread man got stuck on the ball.”
“This is where he broke his toe.”
Their teacher says comprehension is the primary focus.
“I added in a gingerbread theme to make it fun for this week and just looked at the standards in designing my lessons and seeing what I needed to focus on,” Kenton said.“I just find that the kids are learning a lot more because I think I’m paying a lot more attention to the details when I look at the standards.”
Almost all of the states have adopted Common Core standards for public schools in English, Language Arts and Math.
Like last time, he looked at the effect of poverty and minority status on a school’s grade.
Smith examined 491 high schools. 46 of them are charter schools.
He says that at first glance, the average scores suggest charters are the stronger performers.
“Without any adjustments for poverty or minority status, it appears that the charter high schools perform better by a statistically significant difference of 4.37 percent,” Smith said.
But he says this is misleading because charter schools serve a higher percentage of minority students and a lower percentage of students in poverty.
Smith says that if you look at minorities alone without any income adjustment, they have a negative effect on scores. But he argues that most or all of that negative effect by minorities is really an income effect and when you control for income levels in schools, minorities actually improve school scores.
The Florida Board of Governors is touting the list, saying “access to an affordable higher education leads to brighter futures for hundreds of thousands of students. As they graduate and get jobs, the state benefits, too.”
Here are Kiplinger’s 2013 rankings for Florida schools:
“There could be no doubt that Florida is already a major contributor to the world of online learning,” Chancellor Frank Brogan said. “Now we need to organize our efforts to devise a plan that provides a maximum return on investment in the future.”
The 2008 Florida Legislature authorized the formation of the Florida Distance Learning Task Force.
Back then, state leaders hadn’t agreed on definitions for terms like E-learning, distance learning, and online learning.
A Miami Dade program is using the iPod Touch to help 600 students learn how to read.
About 600 Miami Dade students are learning to read using an iPod Touch and an app which allows teachers to listen to and track a student’s performance — or receive help from tutors across the country.
The Innovations for Learning initiative started as a pilot last year in a handful of classes. It’s now being implemented in kindergarten and first grade classrooms in low performing schools.
The program combines teaching, tutoring and technology.
The students are using a digital program called TeacherMate to learn how to read with help from volunteers. The program is aligned with Common Core standards for reading in elementary school.
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