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.
Graduation day at Northwest Florida State College. A new report shows Florida isn't producing enough college graduates to meet job market demands.
Florida is not producing enough college graduates to meet the projected job market needs by 2018, according to a new report from the Lumina Foundation.
The Sunshine State ranks 31st in the nation for the percentage of adults who have earned a college degree.
About 36.5 percent of state residents have earned an associate’s, bachelor’s or a graduate or professional degree. Nationally, 38.3 percent of adults have a college degree.
Florida schools ratings would only drop by a single letter grade under a proposed change to the state school grading system floated at Tuesday’s state Board of Education meeting, according to the Miami Herald.
The state’s plans to toughen its grading system has drawn criticism from school district officials worried that many more schools would earn failing grades under the new system. Parents have criticized plans to test and rate schools that specialize in students with disabilities.
Some of the changes — raising FCAT requirements — have been long-planned. Others, such as testing new English learners and students with disabilities, could be added as required to exempt Florida from federal education rules.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has identified suspicious test scores at nearly 200 school districts.
Florida schools do not have patterns of suspicious test results that have plagued schools in Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis and elsewhere, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of testing data from 69,000 schools in 49 states.
Only one county, Gadsden in the Panhandle, had more than 10 percent of schools show unusual gains or losses from the previous year’s score — and only for one year. That’s a far cry from Atlanta or St. Louis-area schools that had as many as one-quarter of all schools post suspicious gains or losses on standardized tests.
The investigation sprang from a cheating scandal in Atlanta public school that eventually cost superintendent Beverly Hall her job.
In all, nearly 200 school districts had enough suspicious tests that the probability of the scores happening — without any cheating — was on in 1,000. Inn 33 districts those odds were one in one million.
Attendees at a town hall meeting hold up a photo of slain teen Trayvon Martin.
The nation is talking about the death of Trayvon Martin in a gated Florida community Feb. 26, and that discussion included StateImpact Florida as well.
Many of the comments to our coverage this week dealt with Martin’s suspension from school at the time he was shot by a volunteer neighborhood watch leader. Some readers have pulled the Miami-Dade school district’s policies to argue that Martin’s suspension indicates some sort of serious offense.
Update on 3/26 at 1:38 p.m. — Martin family attorney confirms suspension for drugs.
The Martin family attorney has confirmed Trayvon Martin was suspended because he had an empty plastic bag with traces of marijuana, according to the Miami Herald
Our original post from 3/23 at 3:15 p.m.
We don’t yet know why Martin was suspended. The family has said only that his offense was not violent, while a teacher said Martin was suspended for being late too many times.
There are also conflicting reports about the length of Martin’s suspension. The Orlando Sentinel has reported Martin received a five-day suspension, while the Miami Herald reported a 10-day suspension.
Students enrolled in nearly 260,000 courses through the school in the 2010-2011 school year.
Florida trails other states in the number of students enrolled full-time in online programs, but a recently approved bill that expands full-time enrollment could raise those numbers. In addition, 56 school districts operate online programs offering full-time and part-time instruction.
Students at Krop Senior High in Miami wore hooded sweatshirts to remember slain classmate Trayvon Martin.
Hundreds of Carol City High School students walked out of class Thursday, a protest of the shooting of Florida teen Trayvon Martin and the subsequent police investigation, CBS 4 in Miami reports.
The walkout happened about 12:30. Students in other Florida schools have worn “hoodies” as a sign of solidarity. Martin was wearing a hooded sweatshirt when he was shot and killed Feb. 26 by a volunteer neighborhood watchman in Sanford.
Martin lived in Miami Gardens and attended Carol City High School his freshman and sophomore years, the station reported.
School officials have previously sought — and failed — a sales tax hike to help pay for schools.
Seminole County is facing a $16 million budget shortfall next year, even with a bump in state funding. The suburban Orlando district is one of the state’s highest-performing.
State universities have seen construction funding nearly disappear.
Florida universities say declining money for construction and maintenance is possibly the biggest budgetary challenge the schools are facing.
As Florida homes have become more energy-efficient, the state is collecting less in taxes for the Public Education Capital Outlay fund that funds building projects.
The Florida Board of Governors will put together a a task force to study the issue, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Here’s the scope of the problem:
Legislators did manage to find some PECO money for universities by the end of the session — $30 million all told, and about $7 million for maintenance, but the board says it needs between $200 million and $400 million each year to maintain and modernize university buildings across the state.
Rep. Mike Bileca was one of a handful of sponsors of the 'parent trigger' legislation. Parent groups opposing the bill feel they have been shut out of debate.
The Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based, think tank that has been an ardent supporter of school choice, has published a piece opposing the ‘parent trigger.’
The law allows the majority of parents at chronically low-performing schools to petition for one of four methods to overhaul their schools, including replacing administrators and staff, closing the school or converting to a charter school.
Advocates argue the law would provide parents more leverage when dealing with school districts and boards reluctant to acknowledge a problem. But Neal McClusky has an issue that the law doesn’t go far enough in the eyes of the free market advocates at Cato. Parents should have control of the money that pays for their child’s education and the ability to use it at whatever school they believe is best, McCluskey writes.
Attendees at a town hall meeting hold up a photo of slain teen Trayvon Martin.
The Miami high school attended by Trayvon Martin, the student shot and killed by a neighborhood watch leader in Central Florida, held a moment of silence for Martin this morning, students and staff have told StateImpact Florida.
Students at Dr. Michael M. Krop High School say it is the first acknowledgement of Martin’s death since he was killed while visiting his father’s girlfriend’s home near Orlando.
Update at 10:15 a.m. ET Miami-Dade School District Responds
This morning, the chief communications director for the Miami-Dade County school district, John Schuster said there is a reason the school did not announce Trayvon’s death on campus.
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