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

December 5, 2013

Teacher Evaluation Results: Effective or Needs Improvement?

Why are we doing this again? That’s a question people are asking around the state after seeing the second statewide batch of teacher evaluation data this week. Nearly 98 percent of teachers earned ratings of “highly effective” or “effective.” And the percentage of teachers earning the top rating increased to one in three statewide from […]

December 4, 2013
December 3, 2013

More Florida Teachers Earn Top Ratings In 2012-2013 School Year

Nearly 98 percent of Florida teachers earned a top rating, according to initial statewide teacher evaluation data released Tuesday, a slight increase over last year’s results. About one-third of teachers earned the top rating of “highly effective,” up from 23 percent of teachers last year. About 66 percent were rated “effective,” the largest category this […]

November 20, 2013

Why Long-Term Economic Changes Might Mean Better-Quality Teachers

The Great Recession — and disappearing middle-class jobs — may be encouraging more people to go into teaching. Bloomberg View’s Megan McArdle and American Enterprise Institute writer Neerav Kingsland argue it’s happening, and that it will mean better quality candidates entering the teaching field. Good students looking for stability might seek it with a classroom […]

November 18, 2013

Broward Schools Recognized For LGBT Anti-Bullying Policies

The Broward County Public School district has been honored for its anti-bullying policies. Equality Florida recognized the school district at its annual gala this weekend. Broward was specifically being recognized for its policies protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. “The tough reality is that even today, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students face relentless […]

November 14, 2013

How To Have A Hard Talk About Our Changing Environment With Kids

Earlier this week, we looked at how kids who live in coastal Florida learn about sea-level rise. They witness it all around them: on television, in school, sometimes in their front yards. Even so, big, landscape-changing events in nature can be tough for children to understand. So we spoke with Professor David Sobel, who has […]

October 23, 2013

To Thwack Or Not To Thwack; Corporal Punishment Is Not Just Florida’s Dilemma

Florida is on a shrinking list of states that still allow corporal punishment in schools. Education Week’s Alyssa Morones looked at how states are grappling with corporal punishment: Even as an increasing number of districts and states abolish the practice, corporal punishment remains a legal form of discipline in 19 states, most of them in […]

October 18, 2013

Florida Teachers Caught In The Middle Of Testing Dispute

Editor’s note: This post was authored by Sarah Carr and Sarah Butrymowicz for The Hechinger Report. MIAMI—The pushback against the testing component of Common Core here has endangered political support for the controversial national curriculum standards in a linchpin state. But it also has left Florida’s public school teachers in an uncomfortable limbo: Officials expect […]

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