Teaching

Background

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

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April 5, 2012

Pension Case Moves Directly To Florida Supreme Court

Editor’s note: This post was written by WLRN reporter Tasnim Shamma. The Florida Supreme Court accepted a public pension case last week that challenges a law passed in July that requires public employees to contribute 3 percent of their paychecks toward their retirement. The Florida Education Association says this is unconstitutional and has been fighting […]

March 23, 2012

Florida Virtual School Nation’s Top Online Course Provider

The Florida Virtual School remains the largest provider of online courses in the country, according to a new report from Evergreen Education Group. 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 […]

March 14, 2012

Why School Leaders Say There’s Nothing Sexual About Paddling Students

Our story on Florida schools that paddle students was picked up by NPR and we’ve gotten some comments from folks who wondered about a sexual element to spanking. John Shelley (JackinVosburg) wrote: Why do they hit the kids in the butt? Is this a sexual thing? Conky Swayze (Conky) wrote: There’s so much sexual connotation with […]

March 6, 2012

Pinellas School Board Recommends Closing Charter School With Scientology Ties

Bonnie Harvin says her 11-year-old daughter is doing well at Life Force Arts and Technology Academy in Clearwater. “She’s a straight A student,” says Harvin. “Her FCAT scores are above grade level. So yes, I do think she has improves. A lot” But Pinellas County school board members say the evidence to close Life Force […]

March 2, 2012

Colbert: Florida Teacher Charged With Registering Voters “Destroying America”

Last night comedian — er — conservative talk show host Stephen Colbert took on the story of Dawn Quarles, a teacher at Pace High School in the Panhandle. Quarles faces a $1,000 fine for charges she violated Florida’s new law placing strict limits on who can register voters. Colbert declared Quarles, and other teachers, were […]

March 1, 2012

Socrates “Needs Improvement”

What’s Socrates’ value-added score, and would he be able to keep his job? Probably not, according to a humorous post at a ASCD, the nation’s largest curriculum organization. Here’s the clever finish: The results were posted in the Agora for all to see the quality and performance of their teacher. Socrates failed. He simply spent […]

February 23, 2012

Focus On Poverty Ignores Broader Issues, Researcher Says

Asking whether poverty is included in the Florida formula to evaluate teachers is posing the wrong question, according to Matthew DiCarlo at The Shanker Blog. DiCarlo is referring to a recent story where some educators questioned the lack of a poverty factor in the state teacher evaluation formula. State officials argue poverty is irrelevant because […]

Bill Gates: Don’t Use Evaluations To Shame

The leading advocate for modern, complex teacher evaluation formulas argues they should not be used for their most basic purpose — comparing one teacher’s score to another. In an op-ed in the New York Times, Microsoft founder Bill Gates argues individual teacher scores should not be a tool to publicly shame low-rated teachers. To do […]

February 17, 2012

Why Poverty Is Not Included in the Mathematical Equation for Teacher Merit Pay

Florida teachers will soon be judged on how much they improve student scores on a standardized test. Part of their pay is going to be based on a new formula created by the state. But the formula doesn’t take into account what researchers say is one of the strongest indicators of student success: poverty. The […]

Feedback Loop: Florida’s Teacher Formula Only As Good As Its Assumptions

Reader Scubus has a detailed response to yesterday’s story about Florida’s teacher evaluation formula: You know how hurricane models vary in their predictions, and are not often in agreement or 100% accurate? That is a similar mathematical model. They are only as good as the underlying assumptions. In addition, study after study shows that children […]

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