Florida

Putting Education Reform To The Test

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Teaching

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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

August 20, 2013

Three Questions For Teachers About Common Core Standards, Part 1

Yesterday we told you that we spent a lot of time at summer Common Core training sessions for teachers. One of the things we were curious about is how teachers felt about the new education standards fully adopted by Florida and 44 other states. We asked teachers the same three questions about Common Core as […]

August 19, 2013

Five Things We Learned About Common Core This Summer

We spent a lot of time this summer watching and listening as Florida school districts trained teachers about what to expect when the state makes the full switch to new education standards next year. Florida is one of 45 states to fully adopt the Common Core State Standards, which outline what students are expected to […]

August 15, 2013

Classroom Contemplations: Why Teachers Leave The Classroom

We all agree that every student should have good teachers. I think we also agree that there are three ways to improve the teaching force: We must get “bad” teachers who cannot or will not improve out of the classroom We must help “mediocre” teachers improve. We must keep “good” teachers in the classroom. Now, […]

August 14, 2013

What A School Grade Means To Parents

Florida’s system of giving schools grades from A-to-F has been in the spotlight this summer. First, state officials made last-minute changes to the A-to-F formula, preventing more than 150 schools from dropping to F grades. Then, Florida’s education commissioner Tony Bennett resigned over reports that he manipulated school grades in Indiana when he was in charge of […]

August 13, 2013

Classroom Contemplations: How Teachers Find Success From Failure

Editor’s note: Names of students and teachers have been changed. Knowing we were going to be talking about former students, Lisa Perry told me she got out some letters she had saved and read through them.  The exercise inspired her to get in touch with four of her students from over 20 years ago.  (“Facebook […]

July 29, 2013

What Happens When Science Teachers Go To A Rocket Launch

Lauren Case already knows what she’s going to say on the first day of school when her students ask what she did over summer break: “I saw a rocket launch; it was awesome. You want to go too? Maybe you should become an engineer,” says Case, a 10th grade science teacher at South Fork High […]

July 26, 2013
July 24, 2013

Classroom Contemplations: Helping Students Find Their Voice

Editor’s note: Names of teachers and students have been changed. Henry Rodriguez had a lot of ideas as a young, energetic teacher.  He wanted to make his civics class relevant and to help his students be more aware of what was going on in the world.  One of his ideas involved requiring his kids to […]

July 18, 2013

Classroom Contemplations: A Student, On The Value A Teacher Added

Editor’s note: Names of teachers and students have been changed. While most of these stories about the values teachers add come from the teacher’s point of view, I thought it would be interesting to hear one from a student. Benny Rawlings went to a middle school in Miami. “It was not a great school,” he […]

July 12, 2013

Classroom Comtemplations: Lessons After The School Day Ends

Editor’s note: Names of teachers and students have been changed. Madame Logan is a retired high school French teacher. She was filled with stories of former students who had contacted her to tell her of the effects she had on them. Most of these effects were, at best, indirectly related to the French they had […]

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