John O'Connor is the Miami-based education reporter for StateImpact Florida. John previously covered politics, the budget and taxes for The (Columbia, S.C) State. He is a graduate of Allegheny College and the University of Maryland.
Both Gov. Rick Scott and lawmakers want to spend more money on school technology. The question is the best way to do so.
The chairman of the Senate’s Education Committee said Gov. Rick Scott and lawmakers want to spend at least $40 million, and likely more, to upgrade school Internet capacity and add new computers, tablets and other digital tools.
Sen. John Legg, R-Port Richey, said education technology is a priority for Scott and both Republican and Democratic legislative leaders.
Legg said $40 million in Scott’s proposed budget — to be released in full tomorrow — is a starting point.
“I think that was a placeholder,” Legg said, “an indication of a willingness to fund, this year, technology. I think we need to do better. I think we need to do a little bit more.”
The 2013 exhibit hall at FETC, an annual education technology conference in Orlando.
FETC, one of the nation’s oldest and largest education technology conferences, kicks off today in Orlando.
But for the first time teachers, principals and educators won’t have to travel to Orange County in order to participate.
About 50 FETC events, including keynote speeches and many of the seminars where teachers share tips and tricks, will be broadcast online. Conference organizers say the online experience will be as good as attending in person.
“You will possibly have a better experience right there on your computer,” said Sean Brown, vice president of Sonic Foundry, the company broadcasting FETC online. “We are going to give any teacher who tunes in as a virtual attendee a seat in the room.”
The standards outline what students should know at the end each grade.
“I wanted to share what I do in my classroom with other teachers around the United States,” said Buddoo, who has six years experience. “Many teachers may not necessarily know what the differences need to be within their current lessons.
“If other teachers have access to those methods I think it will improve lessons across the board.”
The Florida Association of District School Superintendents want state leaders to replace the A-through-F grades with a new system by 2017. The new reports would add other factors, such as attendance, discipline, parent involvement and more.
But Stewart told a State Board of Education meeting Tuesday she does not support going without grades, even temporarily, as Florida makes the switch to Common Core. Florida is one of 45 states to fully adopt Common Core. The new tests are expected to be harder and fewer students are expected to hit state target scores.
“I don’t think that suspending school grading is the right thing to do for students,” she said.
Stewart said she is working on changes to the school grading system and will propose them at the board’s next meeting in February. Stewart told lawmakers earlier this month that the formula would focus on three factors: student proficiency on state tests; whether student scores are improving; and graduation rates. She expects to recommend a new statewide test in March.
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.
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