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.
Sagette Van Embden / Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
A bill approved by the Florida Senate might make remedial college courses less daunting for students like Shakira Lockett.
Shakira Lockett always got pretty good grades in school. That’s why she was surprised to find out she had failed her college placement exam at Miami Dade College.
Lockett spent a year a half taking remedial classes in reading, writing and math before she could start earning credits toward a degree. She finished her studies — but Lockett’s a rare case for students who end up in remedial courses.
National statistics show just 1 in 10 community college students forced to take a remedial course finish their studies within three years.
The Florida Senate is trying to address that problem, approving a bill that ends requiring students to take remedial classes for no credit. Instead, students would take “co-requisite classes” — taking regular college work while receiving basic instruction at the same time. Those co-requisite courses might span two semesters or require lab work.
The bill, SB 1720, also asks the State Board of Education and the State University System Board of Governors to group majors by shared skills or knowledge, and then identify which courses should be required as a foundation for those majors.
Two private membership groups, the National Governor’s Association and The Council of Chief State School Officers, led the efforts to create the standards. Those groups took money from outside groups to advocate for the standards.
The standards have never been tested.
With the promise of federal money, the federal government encouraged states to adopt the standards before they could review them.
Common standards will make it easier to collect more student data.
And, past Republican Party positions have opposed “one size fits all” education policies. Common Core standards remove choice and competition.
The Florida House and Senate are working on bills that would allow students to choose from more online course providers. However, much of the debate has focused on money.
A Senate committee is attempting to defuse a funding dispute between the state-sponsored Florida Virtual School and private online providers.
Tuesday, the Rules Committee added an amendment to an online education bill asking the Florida Department of Education to study funding for online courses and to recommend changes by the end of the year.
A Florida lawmaker has filed a bill that would exempt teacher evaluation data from open record laws.
A Florida lawmaker has filed a bill which would keep teacher evaluation data private, according to theFlorida Times-Union.
The bill, filed by Fernandina Beach Republican Janet Adkins, is in response to a Florida Times-Union lawsuit seeking the data under state public records laws.
Evaluations consist of three years of data and are exempt from public scrutiny until a year after release. That means teacher evaluation data would be at least four years old before becoming public.
The Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, supports the bill. Adkins says the Florida Department of Education asked her to introduce the bill.
Kathleen Oropeza, Christine Bramuchi and Linda Kobert former Fund Education Now in Orlando. They're joining an effort to organize state education activists toward common goals.
A loose-knit network of education activists generally opposed to the direction Florida has been taking its schools recently is attempting to organize into a more potent political force.
The groups include parents, people who want more state funding for schools, and others who are fed up with the brand of testing-based school accountability that Florida has become famous for. Under the umbrella of the Alliance for Public Schools, they are hoping to bolster their fundraising capacity and step up their efforts to influence legislation at the statehouse.
Melissa Erickson, a past president of the Hillsborough County PTA who is leading the effort, said the goal is to create “education voters” – regular people who will become knowledgeable about education issues and vote for state and local politicians based on their views on education. “We want to make sure we have a presence up there (in Tallahassee.)
The new group, Erickson said, is a way to work with parents, school districts and teachers and get ahead of the debate.
“Most of what we’ve done, it’s been reactionary,” she said. “Most people are incredibly happy with their public schools and think none of this matters to them.”
Screencap from the Foundation for Florida's Future
A group of activists is taking a page from former Gov. Jeb Bush, and forming two non-profit groups to work on education issues. Bush founded the Foundation for Florida's Future and the Foundation for Excellence in Education to research and advocate on issues.
A 501(c)4 is a social welfare group and can engage in more advocacy and lobbying. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling allows businesses and unions to donate unlimited money to 501(c)4 groups, and they can be tied to so-called “super PACs” which raised and spent millions on political advocacy during the 2012 election.
That’s a familiar refrain in K-12 education. And the latest big thing may be bigger than all the others: It’s the Common Core education standards that Florida and 45 other states are now putting in place. And it has public schools across the country sitting on the cusp of a massive change in nearly every aspect of how math and English are taught, learned and tested.
But how does this big thing relate to all the other big things in education that you’ve probably heard about? Here’s a StateImpact survival guide to recent education overhauls. Continue Reading →
Lauren Casselberry / The New Jersey Journal/Landov
Minnesota school districts are among those scrapping traditional grading systems in favor of one tied to standards.
Some Minnesota school districts have found that student scores on state standardized tests were not matching grades earned for classroom work, according to the St. Paul Pioneer-Press.
To correct the problem, districts are switching to standards-based grading which ties student performance to what they are expected to know.
Under the new system, students are allowed to retake tests and submit work again. Only the most recent grade counts. Students are graded on a 1 to 4 scale. A 1 means students do not meet the standards, while a 4 means students exceed the standards.
Educators say more districts are adopting standards-based grading:
More than half of Florida’s Hispanic and black students at state universities currently eligible for the state’s Bright Futures college scholarship would no longer qualify when new standards take effect on July 1, according to a University of South Florida analysis obtained by the Florida College Access Network.
By comparison, about 40 percent of white and Asian students at state universities would no longer be eligible for the scholarship.
The minimum SAT and ACT scores required to be eligible for the merit-based scholarships is increasing. The new standards would only apply to those seeking the scholarship for the first time, and not for those renewing the scholarship. The analysis is based on State University System data for students enrolling in college for the first time in summer/fall 2010 and summer/fall 2011.
Students graduating in the spring of 2014 would have to score 1170 on the SAT or 26 on the ACT and maintain at least a 3.0 grade point average. Currently, students have to score 1020 on the SAT or 22 on the ACT while maintaining a 3.0 GPA.
Walker Middle School media specialist Sara LaBarbera says she teaching her students research and analysis skills she didn't learn until college. New education standards taking effect in 2014 will require students use those skills.
Sara LaBarbera is teaching 6th graders at Walker Middle School near Tampa how to research poets using an online library.
One student, working on a series of questions about a Lewis Carroll poem, asks LaBarbera for help. He has the pieces, but doesn’t quite know how to put them together.
LaBarbera knows how to ask the right questions.
“Alice seems, like, sad or depressed and the White Knight tries to cheer her up by singing her a song,” the student says of the poem.
“OK, so is it a poem that is telling you a story?” LaBarbera asks.
“Sort of,” he responds.
“Do you already know the name for that type of poem?” LaBarbera prompts.
“No.”
“Well when you write an essay that tells a story, what type of essay is it?” she asks.
“Narrative.” Then he pauses as the light goes off: “Ooooohhhhh…”
LaBarbera is a media specialist – in another time they’d be called librarians.
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