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 battle over union rights in Wisconsin are reflected in the results of a national education survey.
A new nationwide education survey released this morning has some interesting implications in Florida, namely that the state sometimes disagrees with the national view on education.
The biggest difference between Florida and the nation in the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll phone survey of 1002 people is on class sizes. The poll sets up a choice between classes “with fewer students and less effective teachers” or “larger classes with more effective teachers.” The question assumes a limited number of quality teachers, and about two-thirds of those polled favored larger classes.
A similar question was put to Florida voters last year, asking whether the state should relax its class size limits. The measure required approval from 60 percent of Florida voters to amend the Florida constitution, but only 54.5 percent approved.
Journalist Steven Brill was on “The Diane Rehm Show” this morning discussing New York City schools’ “Rubber Rooms,” where teachers facing disciplinary action sit and wait — collecting pay checks and taking summers off — in what Brill wrote can be an endless process.
Brill is also the author of “Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools.”
Teachers protest budget cuts and Senate bill 736 -- now law -- in Miami in March.
The new teacher evaluations and merit pay plans school districts are rolling out this year that StateImpact Florida reported yesterday are just a portion of a broad education reform package lawmakers approved last spring.
Pinellas County school board members are trying to move up a hearing on Superintendent Julie Janssen’s future with the district, according to the St. Petersburg Times. Board members declined to say whether they would support Janssen staying on at the proposed Aug. 23rd meeting.
“‘We need to have, I don’t want to say closure, but a definite decision about Dr. Janssen’s employment situation,’ said board member Linda Lerner, who declined to say whether she felt Janssen deserved to keep her job as leader of the state’s seventh-largest school system.
Lerner and board member Robin Wikle, who also has called for the special meeting, said they didn’t want to wait until the board’s next scheduled meeting — Sept. 13 — to make a decision.
‘Whatever may happen on the 23rd, we need the ability to take action,’ said Wikle, who also declined to say if she wanted Janssen to remain.”
The timing could be difficult for the district, which starts classes next week and, like all Florida school districts, is in the midst of implementing state-mandated reforms such as teacher evaluations and pay-for-performance.
Teacher hold signs thanking former Gov. Charlie Crist for vetoing a bill that included pay-for-performance in 2010. The requirement is now state law and districts are beginning to implement plans.
The best Miami-Dade teachers could buy a new car with their bonuses this year while most of their colleagues may only be able to replace an alternator with their bonuses.
The difference in the size of those checks is an attempt to pay teachers based on their performance and that of their students, also known as merit pay, and part of a national experiment to answer a decades-old question: How can school districts motivate teachers to improve?
The experiment involves two issues: What’s the best way to determine which teachers are the most effective; and creating a new pay structure to reward good performance, encourage teachers to improve and draw top students into the field. Florida is one of a handful of states that have required districts to develop pay-for-performance programs, putting them in place by 2014.
A Boca Raton group said they will sue Gov. Rick Scott over how the state chooses its textbooks, according to the St. Petersburg Times.
“The group says the new textbook adoption process does not provide for enough time, readers or transparency relating to decisions on appropriate subject materials in schools.
“It is not possible for two people to review all the textbooks in Florida within a 4-month period of time,” the lawsuit reads, “and thus Senate Bill 2120 renders it impossible for the Defendants to provide high-quality education to all children in Florida as required by law.”
It is at least the eighth lawsuit naming Scott as a defendant since he took office this year. He signed SB 2120, a conforming education budget bill, into law on May 26. Citizens for National Security wants the law repealed and blames Scott for not vetoing the textbook provision.”
A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the DREAM Act
StateImpact Florida’s Monday story about the effect of new Bright Futures scholarship requirements on illegal immigrants or the children of illegal immigrants prompted a number of comments from readers asking why those students should get the lottery-funded scholarships — or any public benefits — at the expense of another student.
The story also spurred Juan, a 22-year-old illegal immigrant who lives in Broward County and will graduate college this fall, to contact us about the story because he too has received a Bright Futures scholarship. Juan said he was the only illegal immigrant he knew of receiving Bright Futures. He recorded an interview earlier today.
Juan’s family came from Venezuela on a visa, but missed a deadline for paperwork and lost their claim for citizenship. His case illustrates the complexities of immigration law, because at one point Juan was “living a normal life” with a driver’s license and other documents before losing those privileges.
Former Atlanta school chief Beverly Hall has a column in Education Week addressing her school district’s cheating on state tests. Her conclusion? Don’t blame the reforms.
“Should I have anticipated cheating, based on dramatic gains in test scores? With hindsight, I wish I had.
But there was every reason to believe that our dramatic restructuring would produce dramatic results, as it has. And those results continue to be confirmed by tests that have been independently administered and completed under the tightest security.
As awful as this cheating scandal is, it would be even more awful if we learned the wrong lesson from it. The culprit is not standardized testing or teacher accountability. We need both.”
Seven Florida colleges placed in the top 100 “Best Buys,” according to a Forbes list released this week, led by the University of Florida at 11, Florida State University at 13, New College of Florida at 16 and the University of North Florida at 19.
Those rankings could change, as the South Florida Sun-Sentinel notes, because lawmakers allowed colleges and universities to raise tuition by 15 percent a year until tuition reaches the national average.
Florida schools finished out of the top 100 in a separate Forbes ranking.
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