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.
But the group is a little less secretive Friday after posting hundreds of pieces of “model legislation” online. The bills are templates lawmakers can adapt in order to pass legislation in their home states.
“At its core, democracy is a participatory process where ideas are shared and the best ideas are advanced,” Ron Scheberle, ALEC’s executive director said in a press release. “The Council and its task forces provide a unique opportunity for legislators to learn from their counterparts from around the country.”
Two bills could give Florida students more flexibility in earning their high school diploma.
After years of adding requirements to earn a high school diploma, Florida lawmakers have proposed bills which would allow students more flexibility in how they earn a diploma.
A House proposal (HB 7091) would create three diploma tracks: College and career; industry and scholar. All three diplomas require four years of English language arts.
Students seeking an industry diploma would have to take four math courses, but the only required course is Algebra I and its end-of-course exam. College and career track students must add Geometry. And instead of requiring students pass the Geometry end-of-course exam, the bill would make the test 30 percent of the final grade.
The scholar track adds a requirement for Algebra II and Statistics, or an equally rigorous course.
A state judge has ruled teacher evaluation component data is exempt from public records laws until a year after the overall evaluation scores are released.
Because the value-added data is developed from an average of three years, Cooper’s order would mean the public would have access only to value-added data that’s at least four years old.
The Times-Union had argued that because the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test data used to calculate value-added figures is public, and the value-added formula is public, the result created when the state crunches the data for teachers should not be exempt.
Gov. Rick Scott and Senate President-Designate Don Gaetz.
Florida’s Senate President says the state’s teacher evaluation system is confusing and should be reworked so teacher ratings more closely match those of the schools they work in.
“We passed that legislation and then we didn’t fund the pay-for-performance system,” Gaetz says. “It seems to me now, that what we need to do is make sure that we sand the rough edges off it, then we institutionalize it, then we help school districts implement it.”
“We grade schools in Florida, and gosh, if you have a C or D school, and you’ve got 90 to 95 percent of teachers in that school rated as effective or highly effective, you’ve got some problems,” Gaetz says. “So, I think there needs to be a hardwired nexus between the performance of schools and whether or not the faculty of that school is deemed to be effective or highly effective or ineffective.”
Senate President Don Gaetz says federal budget cuts could push Florida face down into a pool of red ink.
Five military bases are located within Senate President Don Gaetz’ Northwest Florida district. Thousands of workers earn their pay at those bases, or from affiliated aerospace and defense companies nearby.
Because President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders failed to reach a compromise to avoid automatic cuts to military spending, Gaetz said, that leaves those workers wondering if they’ll be laid off, furloughed or earn less money this year. The cuts are known as sequestration, and are part of a 2011 deal to raise the nation’s borrowing limit.
Florida lawmakers can’t rely on state projections of a small budget surplus this year until the Congress and the president agree on a budget, said Gaetz, R-Niceville.
“The abject failure of this president and this Congress to even pass a Mother’s Day resolution without having a Hatfield’s and McCoy’s family picnic is the cloud that hangs over the Florida economy and makes it very difficult for us to predict how much money we’ll have to operate,” Gaetz said.
If Don Gaetz gives you a task, he will make sure you get it done.
That’s how Cindy Frakes remembers Gaetz, whom she worked with in the Okaloosa County schools. Gaetz was the superintendent then, in the early 2000s. Frakes was, and still is, a member of the school board.
Gaetz kept a list, Frakes said, and he knew what had been finished and what hadn’t
“He was never going to forget,” she says. “Everybody knew he was coming back. He had a lot of respect.”
The Florida Senate
Florida Senate President Don Gaetz is a former superintendent who wants to revamp career education programs.
Under Gaetz, Okaloosa schools rose from middle of the pack, according to the state’s report card system, to the state’s highest- or second-highest scoring district.
Now Gaetz, a Republican, is president of the Florida Senate. And he is pushing similar changes across Florida.
Gaetz is a former journalist and hospital executive who saw politics as a way to make big changes for schools and health. Gaetz won his first election for school board in 1994. He was elected superintendent in 2000, resigning the post when he won his Senate seat in 2006.
“I learned early on that if you want to do something differently, if you want to do something innovative, generally speaking, there’s a door you have to go through in Tallahassee or Washington to get it done,” he told StateImpact Florida in an interview last week. “I wanted to try and get through the door in Washington or in Tallahassee to do something to improve health care, to do something to improve the educational quality of my own children’s schools.”
Gaetz says Florida is behind schedule, but believes Bennett can ensure schools are ready on time.
“I think we lost a year because the Department of Education sort of flailed around and didn’t implement the standards,” Gaetz says. “I think we could still make up the time.
“Tony Bennett is the new commissioner of education in the state of Florida. He is someone who has proven that he can institutionalize reform and make it work actually in the classroom. So my hope is that we’ll be able to implement the new standards.”
Florida has yet to join other states pledging to adopt new science standards which include teaching about human-caused climate change.
Florida is not helping lead efforts to develop new science standards, our colleagues at WLRN report, and it’s unclear if the state will adopt the standards.
The new standards would begin teaching students in elementary school about the effects of climate change.
The science standards are expected to be released next month. The Sunshine State is not one of the roughly 40 states which have said they will adopt the standards or may adopt the standards.
By contrast, Florida is leading the development of a new test to assess the new Common Core State Standards for math and English language arts. The new standards are scheduled to take effect for every Florida student beginning in the fall of 2014.
State lawmakers might require school districts post a schedule of district-required tests online, something Hillsborough County schools and other districts already do.
They range from Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests and biology exams required to graduate high schools, to alternative tests for special needs students and personal fitness exams.
Not every student has to take every test — those personal fitness exams, for instance — and not every one is a state or federal requirement. Hillsborough County schools list them all on elementary, middle and high school calendars and note which ones are state requirements.
Hillsborough County schools spokesman Stephen Hegarty said the district has posted its testing schedule since at least 2005. Miami-Dade schools and many other large- and medium-sized Florida districts also post a schedule.
Third grade students will spend at least eight hours a year taking Florida’s next standardized test, while high school juniors will spend nearly 10 hours a year to complete the new online exam.
A Florida 8th grader — taking the FCAT reading, math, science and writing tests — will spend 8 hours and 20 minutes on testing this year. Under the new exam scheduled for the 2014-2015 school year, 8th graders will have an additional 65 minutes of math and English language arts testing and will still have to take the 160-minute FCAT science exam.
PARCC
Third grade students will spend eight hours over the course of the school year completing Florida's next standardized test. High school juniors will spend nearly 10 hours on the new exam.
The test, known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, will replace most of the current Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. The test is designed to assess new education standards Florida, 44 other states and the District of Columbia have fully adopted, known as Common Core State Standards. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia are partnering to develop PARCC.
Tuesday the coalition designing the test released new guidelines for states, including how much time students will spend taking the test and an interactive tool to help school districts determine how many computers and how much Internet bandwidth they will need.
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