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.
The UCP Bailes campus is an Orlando charter school with a mix of students with disabilities and without. Schools such as UCP could be hit by new state school grade rules..
But one Orlando charter school is pretty happy with their results.
We told you about the UCP Bailes campus in East Orlando back in December. The school began its life specializing in students with cerebral palsy and other severe disabilities. Since then the school has adopted an inclusion model.
About half the students have disabilities and half do not.
UCP students scored an average of 199 on the reading test, just under the state’s average score of 201. The percentage of UCP students scoring 3 or higher on the test, 63 percent, bested the state average of 56 percent.
The foundation was started by former Gov. Jeb Bush, and graded lawmakers based on their votes for a handful of bills.
The group supports raising standards for students, holding teachers and schools accountable and expanding public and private school choice.
Included in the tally were bills expanding access to online or virtual schools, allowing students to graduate early, and expanding a program which grants tax credits to fund private school scholarships.
And that got former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s attention.
Bush wrote a letter to committee members asking them to abandon their plans to officially condemn Common Core. The committee took Bush’s advice last year, though ALEC has since opposed Common Core.
UPDATE: ALEC education task force director Adam Peshak says that a task force approved a resolution opposing Common Core in December, but the Board of Legislators has yet to vote on the resolution. The resolution is not ALEC policy until the board votes, Peshak says. More on those distinctions here and here.
The incident is an example of the unique national position Bush occupies on education. He’s able to work with Democratic groups — such as on federal Race To The Top grants — while standing up to the conservative wing of his own Republic Party on issues Bush supports, such as Common Core.
Teachers protest budget cuts and Senate bill 736 -- the law establishing merit pay -- in Miami in 2011.
What if you threw a party, but no one who was invited appreciated your hospitality?
That’s what happened with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which recently sponsored a teacher town hall meeting as part of the American Graduate project. A group of Hillsborough County teachers boarded a bus to Jacksonville for the event.
The teachers were there to talk about their concerns. But when WUSF reporter Sarah Pusateri gave them an open mic, it was Hillsborough County’s pay-for-performance plan that bugged them most.
You know — the same merit pay plan funded with a $100 million grant from the Gates Foundation. Hillsborough County is in the second year of the three-year project.
Mitt Romney’s education plan would effectively erase school district boundaries — allowing city students to enroll in the surburban schools they’ve eyed enviously, James E. Ryan writes in the New York Times.
Mr. Romney’s proposal, if put in place, could change that. Most directly, and perhaps most dramatically, Mr. Romney’s proposal would force — yes, force — suburban districts to accept city students, a step that the Supreme Court refused to take back in 1974. As Mr. Romney said in a white paper also released last week, he would require states to “adopt open-enrollment policies that permit eligible students to attend public schools outside of their school district.”
In doing so, Mr. Romney’s proposal would target the real source of educational inequality in this country: school district boundaries, which wall off good school systems from failing ones. The grossest inequalities in educational opportunity today exist between school districts, not inside them.
If Mr. Romney’s proposal is sincere, it would place him far to the left of the Obama administration when it comes to educational opportunity. Mr. Obama has focused on improving teacher evaluations, promoting common academic standards, turning around failing schools and increasing charter schools. Fine and sensible? Maybe. Bold? Hardly. Bold is giving poor city kids the right to attend good suburban schools.
President Obama praised former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's education leadership at a Miami school last year. Nationally, both Republicans and Democrats are listening to Bush's education ideas.
Indiana education superintendent Tony Bennett was new to office and looking to make dramatic changes to his state’s schools. The biggest? Require third graders pass a state reading test or get held back.
But the state lawmakers were hesitant.
So Bennett and Gov. Mitch Daniels, both Republican, called in some help: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. He pioneered the third grade reading requirement a decade ago.
“Jeb Bush has…a big mind and a big heart for education reform,” Bennett said. “I believed in my heart that he had a great blueprint.”
Many, such as Maldebot, wrote to say their children were discouraged.
What can I do ? My daughter is very upset and feels like dropping out of 10th grade beause she was short 3 points in the Reading exam in FCAT..Help ! This takes the motivation out of kids
WUSF reporter -- and future teacher -- Yoselis Ramos.
Editor’s Note: This is a first-person story from WUSF reporter Yoselis Ramos, who is studying to become a teacher. She recently hopped a bus with other teachers to attend a Jacksonville town hall meeting.
Along the way she spoke with her fellow travelers about what its like to lead a classroom.
You can watch “American Graduate: Teacher Town Hall” tonight at 9 on WUSF TV.
I was hoping the trip would give me insight into what it’s really like to stand up in front of a class and teach. I’m only a sophomore in college- I still have time to change my mind. I wanted to make sure this is what I want to do.
So I boarded a charter bus with 30 Tampa-area teachers.
It wasn’t long before I was hearing about their frustrations — such as spending the last two hours each evening grading papers. And it sure wasn’t hard to keep the teachers talking.
Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney outlines his education plan Wednesday.
Presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney rolled out his education plan Wednesday in Washington, D.C.: More school choice options; reward high-performing charter schools and help them expand; require easy-to-read school report cards.
And if Romney’s influences were still a bit cloudy, he made them explicit in his speech to the Latino Coalition.
“And leadership makes a huge difference,” Romney told the group. “When Jeb Bush became governor of Florida, reading scores of Hispanic students in that state’s school system were dismal. He brought focused innovation and passionate leadership. Today those scores have risen dramatically.
But it isn’t hidden in Florida, which is one of a handful of states which tracks chronic absenteeism. Florida considers students who miss 21 or more days of schools as chronically absent.
Rural school districts tend to have higher rates of chronic absenteeism than urban district.
But Pinellas County is an exception. Nearly 18 percent of students in a school district of more than 125,000 students missed 21 or more days of school.
Those days stack up quick, according to Florida Department of Education data. Pinellas County students missed at least 467,586 days last year — or the equivalent of nearly 2,600 school years total.
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