UF education professors Joseph Gagnon and Brianna Kennedy-Lewis culled discipline data, interviewed school leaders who use corporal punishment and surveyed administrators at high-poverty schools about what they do to discipline students.
Anya Kamenetz is an education reporter for NPR and author of a new book on testing in U.S. schools.
Lots of people think there’s too much testing going on in schools right now. It’s one of the most contentious issues in education.
Lawmakers want to scale back the amount of time Florida students spend taking tests.
But at the same time, Florida is rolling out a new test tied to new math and language arts standards — known as Common Core.
NPR education reporter Anya Kamenetz researched the history and use of standardized exams for her book, “The Test.”
Kamenetz sat down with WLRN’s StateImpact Florida education reporter John O’Connor to talk about what students are losing — because of all the tests.
Q: What was your view on testing before you started work on the book and did it change at all during the course of reporting and writing it?
A: As I began to be an education reporter, first I was a higher education reporter. And I was very enthralled with, sort of, innovations in higher ed. And when I turned my attention to K-12, partly because I had a child of my own, I realized that there was very much less scope for, sort of, innovation in K-12.
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Editor’s note: As schools around the country celebrate the Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday holiday, we’re reposting this essay from former South Florida teacher Jeremy Glazer about race in education.
Here’s a question:How do you teach a class of all black students in an all black school that Brown v. Board of Education ended segregation decades ago?
That isn’t a hypothetical question, but one I remember clearly asking myself. I was teaching American History for the first time in one of our nation’s many embarrassingly homogeneous schools. I could not, with a straight face, teach my students that segregation had ended. They’d think that either they or I didn’t know what the word segregation meant.
But, as a beginning teacher, I was afraid of telling too much truth. Brown’s legacy is not a hopeful story about law, or government, or progress, and it seemed like a particularly cruel lesson in power, racism, and injustice. I wanted to be both honest and gentle to my students and probably failed at both.
With Republicans in control of both houses, the long-overdue No Child Left Behind overhaul may happen.
No Child Left Behind needs an update. Born in 2002, the law expired in 2007 and has sat as Republicans and Democrats struggled to find agreement.
But Republicans now in control of both Congressional chambers seem ready to take on the task — and likely reduce federal education requirements on states.
Most students will take the Florida Standards Assessments online.
When lawmakers return to Tallahassee in March for the annual legislative session, they have a lot of questions they need to answer about public school testing.
Senators laid out their concerns about the state testing system last week at a series of meetings.
They don’t know how many tests the state requires, or how long it takes to complete those exams.
They don’t know how much the state and school districts spend on testing.
And they’re not convinced they can depend on all the results of those exams.
Sen. David Simmons – and his colleagues — wants to change that.
“We’ve got the chance here this spring to do a re-write of this so that we can, in fact, assure that we’re not over-testing our children,” Simmons said.
The president of Broward College supports President Barack Obama's proposal to offer students two years of college tuition-free.
The leaders of two of the nation’s largest community colleges say they support President Barack Obama’s proposal to give students two years of college for free.
In a written statement, Broward College president J. David Armstrong says the proposal could mean more training for teachers, nurses, paramedics, firefighters and police. That’s good for the economy, he says.
The proposal “provides unprecedented access and opportunity for all to attend the first two years of college and earn a certificate or associate’s degree since it directly addresses economic barriers for those seeking the American Dream,” Armstrong says.
Miami Dade College already offers full scholarships to many students.
President Eduardo Padron says community colleges support the idea because the cost of college often prevents students from finishing their studies.
Orlando Democratic Sen. Darren Soto has introduced a bill establishing a minimum salary of $50,000 for all "instructional personnel."
Beginning teachers would earn at least a $50,000 salary – starting next school year – under a bill filed this week in Tallahassee.
Sen. Darren Soto (D-Orlando) filed the bill, SB 280, which cites a need for the state to attract and retain teachers. It seeks to increase their pay without affecting other personnel and programs.
Lawmakers would have to put enough money into education to guarantee the minimum starting salary for teachers and to ensure that districts have enough money to maintain other services. The base salary would be adjusted each year for inflation.
The bill doesn’t explain how lawmakers should come up with the money to boost all of those salaries. It makes no mention of teacher evaluations – which impact salaries. It also doesn’t say whether experienced teachers would get a pay increase since beginners would be bumped up considerably.
While the starting pay varies among districts, the state Department of Education says the average salary among all Florida teachers for the 2013-2014 school year was $47,780.
The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average salary for all Florida workers is just over $41,000.
Education Week gave the state strong scores for equity in student achievement. Test results show minority students generally perform better in Florida than other states, and the gap between white and minority student scores is smaller in Florida than other states.
But Education Week took big deductions for what Florida spends on education. Florida earned an F for school spending.
Education Week didn’t rank states overall last year, but in 2013 Florida ranked sixth in the nation. The comparison is slightly unfair because Education Week changed the criteria used to rank schools this year.
Sen. Bill Montford, a Democrat, is also CEO of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents.
A state senator and leader of the Florida’s school superintendents association said he’s not sure schools will have the technology in place for new online exams this spring.
Education Commissioner Pam Stewart told the Senate Education Appropriations committee that Florida’s new statewide tests, the Florida Standards Assessments, are on track for use beginning in March. The tests are tied to new Common Core-based math, reading and writing standards.
“I would feel very uncomfortable,” Montford said, “leaving here today thinking that all districts are ready from a technological standpoint to administer the assessment this year.”
The conversation came during the first big week of committee work prior to this year’s legislative session. The amount and cost of testing is expected to be a high-profile issue.
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