If you want one of the roughly 1,800 new scholarships for students with disabilities that allows parents to mix and match services for their children, you’d better get an application in soon.
More than 1,200 families applied for a Personal Learning Scholarship Account, or PLSA, in the first week of applications. The scholarships are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis and are intended for students autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and other significant learning challenges.
“We really didn’t expect to see this much demand this quickly,” said Patrick Gibbons, spokesman for Step Up For Students, which administers the state scholarship program.
State leaders weren’t sure how many parents would be aware of the scholarships when lawmakers approved the program this year. But word spread quickly, and more than 700 families said they were interested before enrollment opened July 18th.
Gibbons said the scholarships are more flexible than the state’s other school choice programs.
“You can mix and match public school and private school. You can pay for tutors, speech therapies and even save that money for college.”
The scholarships range in value from about $4,500 to more than $19,000 dollars depending on a student’s grade, school district and disability.
So lawmakers expanded the requirement to the 300 lowest-scoring school this year (it’s actually 307 because some schools had tied scores).
In Pasco County, the Tampa Bay Times reports the school district said they are adding extra instruction time without changing the length of the school day at three schools. That’s because the district wants to avoid the $975,000 cost of rearranging bus schedules.
Gov. Rick Scott proposed a $30 million job training program and paid summer internships for teachers. The goal is to encourage more students to student science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Gov. Rick Scott spent Monday touring high-tech South Florida companies looking to hire.
He wants to make sure firms like Boca Raton’s Modernizing Medicine, which designs electronic medical record systems, have workers ready.
“If you think about – I’ve got kids and even have, hard to believe, I have grandkids – the jobs of the future are going to be science, technology, engineering and math-related,” said Scott, a Republican. “So we need to do workforce training in those areas.”
Darlene Paul, principal of West Defuniak Elementary, speaks to a student during a visit to a third-grade classroom. Paul says she has been impressed with the academic success of young students who have been taught only using the new Florida Standards.
For the past year The Hechinger Report and StateImpact Florida have taken you into two schools to hear what preparations for Florida’s new Common Core-based standards sound like. The standards outline what students should know in math and language arts. When classes start this fall every grade in every Florida public school will use them. But are schools ready?
The Hechinger Report’s Jackie Mader and StateImpact Florida’s John O’Connor tell us what they’ve learned.
The teachers at Tampa’s Monroe Middle School are confident that the transition to Florida’s new standards will go well. They’ve got a principal and superintendent enthusiastic about Common Core, and say that they’re on track for the changes.
“A lot of times in education they put things under different names when it’s something you’ve been doing all along, so I think we’re probably doing mostly what we need to do already,” said gym teacher Shane Knipple. Civics teacher Tony Corbett agreed. “It just gives us 10 things to focus on that we’ve already been focusing on.
Although the teachers at Monroe Middle School are optimistic, many teachers and school leaders think the switch to Common Core is the biggest change in education now, and it’s taken a lot of work.
About 8 percent of Florida teachers left the classroom from 2008 to 2009. Nationally, 6.8 percent of teachers left the classroom during the same period. Florida’s rate of attrition is higher than other large states, such as California, Illinois, New York and Texas.
Predictably, those rates are higher at schools with a high percentage of low-income or minority students. Those schools are also more likely to employ teachers with less experience.
“Teachers departing because of job dissatisfaction link their decision to leave to inadequate administrative support, isolated working conditions, poor student discipline, low salaries, and a lack of collective teacher influence over schoolwide decisions,” the report states.
Ingersoll estimates the turnover cost the Sunshine State between $61.4 million and $133.6 million from 2008 to 2009.
The study compared course requirement changes between 1980 and 1999. Florida was among a group of states with the most required math and science courses — six. Proponents argue that requiring tougher courses — rigor, in edubuzzspeak — better prepares all students for college or a post high school career.
But the Washington University researchers found no rising tide.
“We observed no evidence of broad benefit related to increases in mathematics and science [high school course graduation requirements],” the researchers wrote.
Corinthian Colleges, the parent company of Everest University, has agreed to sell or close all its campuses. This campus is Boston will close. Florida campuses will be sold.
After a long reign as the fastest-growing and most problematic sector in higher education, for-profit colleges are on the ropes.
This week the U.S. Department of Education announced that it will review how federal student aid is administered at one of the country’s largest for-profit colleges, the University of Phoenix. Owned by the publicly traded Apollo Group, the University of Phoenix enrolls over 200,000 students, rivaling the size of the nation’s largest public university system.
Between 2000 and 2010, enrollment at the nation’s for-profit colleges quadrupled, peaking at 1.7 million — or about 1 in 10 college students. These colleges benefited from both the Internet boom and the relaxing of credit in the run-up to the financial crisis. They spent serious money on advertising and marketing, targeting working and low-income adults with convenient online programs and the promise of job opportunities, and sometimes lending them private student loans. But the sector has been plagued by repeated allegations of financial mismanagement, fraud and abuse. For-profit colleges have been the target of class action lawsuits, congressional investigations and probes by state attorneys general.
The Department of Education controls the purse strings for these institutions, because they’re highly dependent on federal student aid for revenue. to another big for-profit, Corinthian, after that college reported errors in enrollment and job placement figures and failed to comply with record requests. Unable to operate with even a temporary cash freeze, Corinthian struck a deal with the Department of Education earlier this month to sell or close all of its campuses.
The Department of Education controls the purse strings for these institutions, because they’re highly dependent on federal student aid for revenue. Last month the department halted funding to another big for-profit, Corinthian, after that college reported errors in enrollment and job placement figures and failed to comply with record requests. Unable to operate with even a temporary cash freeze, Corinthian struck a deal with the Department of Education earlier this month to sell or close all of its campuses.
“Teenagers are basically unable to fall asleep on a regular basis every night, say, before 10:45 or 11,” Wahlstrom said. “It’s just a biologic almost impossibility.”
Students and civil rights activists are still asking Florida to hold black and Hispanic students to a higher standard.
It’s been a little more than a year since the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County filed a federal civil rights complaint against the state’s race-based academic goals.
There have since been a number of protests by activists who oppose lower expectations for minorities.
But to understand how the race-based goals play out in the classroom, StateImpact Florida sat down with a panel of high school students to talk about the expectations:
Sammy Mack / StateImpact Florida
We spoke with a panel of students about Florida's race-based education goals.
But the number of schools earning the state’s highest rating also increased this year.
“The increase in the number of schools earning an ‘A’ this year is great news for students and teachers who have worked hard for this success,” Commissioner Pam Stewart said in a statement. “I appreciate the work by the educators and families and students and know they will continue to improve in the future even as we transition to a new grading system.”
The is the final year schools will earn grades based in part on results from FCAT exams. Next year the state switches to the Florida Standards Assessment, which will test students on Florida’s Common Core-based standards.
Department of Education officials pointed out 116 schools improved by at least two letter grades.
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