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.
A "lean and green" meal from the Miami-Dade schools test kitchen. This one has spinach lasagna, salad and a mozerella-stuffed bread stick.
Miami-Dade school meals are going lean and green this school year.
The district is adding smoothies made with Naked brand juices, greek yogurt and vegetarian lasagna.
But at an event Monday unveiling the new dishes, the district was most proud of their version of a Miami classic. The “guavalito” is a whole grain, lower sugar version of a guava and cheese pastry made by a local baker.
“This was developed right here by the staff,” said Penny Parham, the district’s director of food and nutrition, slicing open one of the pastries. “This is 100 calories; no trans fat. The added sugar is below 35 percent – it meets our district wellness policy.”
He chatted with StateImpact Florida about school discipline, testing requirements and how Congress is rewriting the federal No Child Left Behind education law.
Q: We are currently in the midst of a national conversation about race and policing following the deaths of several black men and women either in police custody or at the hands of police. Is this conversation extending to education and how is it?
A: It absolutely is and lots of different ways.
So I’ve spent time in Ferguson after the issues there. Spent time in Baltimore; recently been back there a couple times.
And our schools operate in the real world. And our kids have questions. They are sometimes scared; they’re sometimes angry; they’re sometimes confused; they’re sometimes frightened. And we have to have very open and honest conversations about a whole host of issues — race being a difficult one, but I think hugely important.
And it’s interesting. I think you know we have a lot of work to do ourselves.
We’ve been very, very public about the school to prison pipeline. Sometimes folks don’t like when I talk about that, but that is real.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder and I put out data from our civil rights data collection process that showed that across the country the school prison pipeline starts in pre-K, with three- and four-year-olds, with disproportionate numbers of young boys of color are being suspended and expelled.
Posters advertise new Miami-Dade County school choice programs.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools plan to eliminate out-of-school suspensions this year, preferring to keep kids in class and address behavior problems.
Miami-Dade schools have included $3.2 million dollars in the district budget to eliminate out-of-school suspension.
“Traditional outdoor suspensions and disciplinary actions don’t work,” said Miami-Dade schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho. “We ought to understand the root causes of student misbehavior…to actually address the human being behind the behavior, rather than simply condemning it and applying a consequence to it.”
The district is setting up “success centers” so suspended students don’t disrupt classrooms. The centers are staffed by teachers, social workers and other service providers to work with the students – and keep them on their classwork.
“This is not going to be a vacation” for suspended students, said Carvalho.
At one point, the Schultz Center had state funding and a big, multi-million dollar contract with Duval County schools to help teachers improve their craft.
The Schultz Center has trained thousands of teachers since it was founded in Jacksonville in 1997. But when state revenues declined, the Schultz Center funding was cut.
So the Schultz Center had to change. The non-profit is expanding beyond Northeast Florida to offer training to teachers statewide, both in person and online. And they’re building an incubator for education entrepreneurs.
They’re also helping teachers adjust to big changes in the classroom.
State law requires that teachers are evaluated each year. That evaluation must include how well that teacher’s students performed on standardized exams — and whether they did better or worse than expected, based on a complex statistical formula.
That formula is known as VAM, or value-added model. The VAM score counts for at least one-third of a teacher’s total evaluation score.
Thursday’s decision sets a statewide standard for 4th through 10th grade language arts teachers, 4th through 8th grade math teachers and Algebra I teachers — teachers in subjects with a statewide exam. State officials said the rule change will apply to about one-third of all Florida teachers.
State Board of Education member Rebecca Fishman Lipsey is questioning the accuracy of forcible sexual assaults reported on state college campuses.
A State Board of Education member is questioning the number of sexual assaults reported on state college campuses.
Rebecca Fishman Lipsey believes it is unlikely that there were only seven forcible sexual assaults reported by the 28-college sytem with more than 400,000 students. Those figures do not include crime data for the dozen schools in the state’s university system.
Fishman Lipsey began Wednesday’s board meeting by handing out pages of state college system crime data. Notice anything unusual she asked?
“It’s just a string of zeroes,” she said of the column tallying forcible sexual assaults. “Initially, for maybe half a second, my brain could go ‘Wow, how wonderful there’s not a single rape at any of our campuses. That’s an incredible thing.’
But Fishman Lipsey said she doubts the news is that good. She asked the Florida Department of Education to look into the accuracy of the figures.
Broward County schools superintendent Robert Runcie shared lessons learned at a White House summit on student discipline.
South Florida school leaders traveled to Washington Wednesday to share ideas on how to reduce on-campus arrests and suspensions.
Superintendents from Broward County and Miami-Dade County shared how their districts dealt with the problem at a summit hosted by the White House.
Research shows that students who are suspended before 9th grade are less likely to graduate. And on-campus arrests can stick with a student for life, hindering chances at a college education or finding a job.
Broward County schools superintendent Robert Runcie said his district led the state in the rate of arrests and suspensions when he took control in 2011. Minority students were arrested and suspended at disproportionate rates.
“Our goal can’t be to have students go into the courtroom,” Runcie said. “Our focus has got to be keep them in the classroom and out of the courtroom.”
The district started a new program to try to change student behavior and avoid arrests and suspensions. More than 2,000 students went through the program its first year and more than 90 percent did not commit a second offense.
The difference in passing rates between state and federal tests has been dubbed the proficiency, or honesty, gap.
Some states are telling students and parents they are better at reading, writing, math and other subjects than they really are, according to a new website from the Foundation for Excellence in Education.
The website, WhyProficiencyMatters.com, tracks the percentage of students scoring at grade level on state tests — “proficient” in education jargon. The site then compares those rates to how well students perform on the National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP. Students take the NAEP every two years and the exam results are considered the gold-standard of education data.
The group has found that many states report a much higher percentage of students are proficient on state tests than are proficient on NAEP. Foundation for Excellence in Education director Patricia Levesque says some states are telling students they’re ready for college or the workforce when they might not be.
“It’s really important to look at what is the gap between how your students are doing on the national test compared to how they’re doing on the state test,” she said, “because that gap tells you, basically, how honest is your state being to parents with how their individual child is doing.
“We’ve been telling parents ‘Oh no, your child is fine.’ But then when they get to college they’re actually not ready.”
You’d expect South Florida residents might see a reason to require students to study Spanish — gateway to Latin America, and all — and they do.
But the University of Florida found the idea was supported by more than 60 percent of those polled in every region of the state — North, Central, Southwest and Southeast.
Christopher McCarty is the director of the University of Florida Survey Research Center at the Bureau of Economic and Business Research. He added the question to the university’s monthly economic poll and is surprised by the result.
“Given this is somewhat of a contentious issue, certainly in other states, I thought that this might be more contentious here,” he said. “But there was strong support for requiring Spanish and requiring our children learn to be bilingual.”
Another way Florida has tried to help school prepare students for jobs is the Career and Professional Education Act. The law helps businesses create academies within public schools to train students and help them earn professional certifications. Those certifications can help students find a job or earn college credit.
So what kinds of certifications are Florida students earning?
Computer skills are a top choice, with students learning how to edit and manipulate images, create web sites and use basic office software. Food protection is the top career-specific certification, followed by several medical certifications.
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