Florida

Putting Education Reform To The Test

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Background

Merit pay; eliminating tenure; new teacher evaluations — how are school, district and state policies affecting how educators and their students perform?

Latest Posts

September 7, 2012

Teachers Apply For DeSoto County Jobs After Hearing StateImpact Florida Story

Our story on Florida schools starting the year with hundreds of teacher vacancies is helping one high school fill teaching positions that have been empty for weeks. DeSoto County High School has been struggling to find foreign language teachers. Our story aired nationally on NPR, and the school’s principal says she has since received  about 10 […]

September 5, 2012

Why Florida Schools Struggle to Hire Teachers By The Start Of School

Schools have been open for a couple of weeks across much of Florida, but not all of the students know who their teachers are yet. There’s typically a lot of teacher turnover during the summer break, and schools can’t always get vacant teaching positions filled by the time school starts. At DeSoto County High School […]

August 31, 2012

Florida Schools Rely More on Teach for America Teachers

The number of Teach for America teachers working in Florida schools is going up. Teach for America recruits, trains and places candidates — often recent college graduates — in low-income schools. The program currently places teachers in just two Florida school districts: Miami-Dade and Duval. This year, 300 TFA teachers are on Miami-Dade school rosters. […]

August 29, 2012

The Earlier Schools Hire, The Better Teachers They Get

When JP Taravela High school went into the summer break, there were 16 teacher vacancies — three resigned or relocated, 13 retired. Over the summer, five more teachers resigned, according to the school’s principal Shawn Cerra. “I lost four out of the five to the virtual world,” he said. The Broward County teachers left the […]

August 24, 2012

First Year Teacher Gets One Week to Create the Curriculum for the Entire Year

First year teachers in Florida are wrapping up their first week in a classroom. StateImpact Florida caught up with one to find out what the process is like to get new teachers in the door, and prepared for the opening day. John Price is a first year teacher in Broward County — the nation’s sixth […]

August 17, 2012

How Hillsborough Schools Are Keeping More New Teachers In The Classroom

Hillsborough County schools are retaining more than nine of every ten new teachers they hire with the help of a mentoring program funded by a $100 million dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Teacher retention has been a persistent problem nationally, with some studies finding as many as half of all new […]

July 27, 2012

The Secret Lives of Students: “Dear Future Teacher…”

For today’s installment in our series, The Secret Lives of Students, students write a letter to their future teachers.

Editor’s note: This post was written by rising middle school students Teley Laporte and Joshua Partridge.

July 26, 2012
July 24, 2012

How Turning A Gain Into A Loss Makes Merit Pay Work

A team of economists says a new study shows teachers are motivated by performance pay and produce better student results. That’s contrary to a handful of prior pay-for-performance studies which showed little to no improvement among students. The difference this time? Teachers were given the money up front and told they would lose it if […]

July 18, 2012

Training Teachers To Use Mobile Technology in Miami-Dade Classrooms

Miami-Dade public schools’ technology education is getting a $75,000 boost from a Verizon Foundation. The Education Fund will dole out the grant to help Miami Dade teachers and students in STEM programs – science, technology, engineering and math – during the upcoming school year. The money will help teachers to implement a new initiative called “bring […]

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