If you’ve got concerns about Florida’s K-12 math, English and literacy standards — or a suggestion about how to improve them — you’ve got until tomorrow to submit them to the Florida Department of Education.
The agency is gathering feedback at the request of Gov. Rick Scott. So far the agency has received more than 13,000 comments. All comments must be submitted on or before October 31.
The standards, known as Common Core, have drawn opposition as schools approach next fall’s deadline for using the standards in every grade. The standards outline what students should know at the end of each grade. Students will need to show what they know and prove with evidence how they know it.
“I am extremely pleased and appreciate all the feedback from parents, teachers, administrators and the public about Florida’s standards,” Education Commissioner Pam Stewart said in a statement. “We encourage everyone to take this opportunity to let us know their ideas and suggestions to make our standards the best they can be.”
Students at Florida's community colleges can now skip remedial courses.
Most students at Florida’s community colleges now have a choice about whether they want to take the state’s college placement test and any remedial reading, writing and math courses they might require.
The law takes effect this spring — and students are registering for classes right now.
As a result, colleges have to check in with every new and returning student to find out if they’re exempt from remedial requirements. To find out who is exempt from the requirements, click here.
Hillsborough Community College has given its advisers a sort-of flow chart to run through with students. The outline asks new students for their high school transcripts and returning students for their college records and then proceeds from there.
Does the student need to take the college placement exam? Should they?
That’s because Florida lawmakers approved a law (SB 1720) which makes the courses and placement test voluntary for many students. Remedial courses force students to pay for refresher classes before starting on their degree. The classes do not count toward a student’s degree.
Students who entered high school in the past decade and earned Florida’s standards diploma no longer have to take the state’s college placement exam. Likewise, students who earn target scores on the SAT, ACT or the FCAT can use those scores to prove they do not need remedial courses.
Active duty military members are also exempt from having to take the placement exam and remedial courses.
After the jump, read the new law, the State Board of Education rule implementing the law and the legislative analysis of SB 1720. And click here to read our series on remedial education, 13th Grade.
Hillsborough Community College's Dale Mabry campus.
Khadejah Gilbert found out she wasn’t quite ready for higher education when she enrolled in Hillsborough Community College.
She’s one of many students who had to take brush up in basic subjects before starting her associate of arts degree in liberal arts.
The classes cost money, but don’t come with any credit
“I took prep reading and a prep writing before I took English I. And a math class too,” Gilbert said, taking a break from her studies with a game of chess. “I would have wanted to go toward my degree and I’d get some credit for taking it. It’s credit given, but not on my transcript, so, it sucks.”
But no U.S. state beat the top-performing countries in math or science, and Florida has a lower percentage of top-performing math and science students than other countries. The results compared math and science scores on tests taken in 2011 in the U.S. and around the world.
Florida’s average eighth grade math score of 513 ranked it 39th in the world, just behind Finland and just ahead of students in Ontario, Canada. The average U.S. score was 509 and the average international score was 500.
South Korea earned a top average math score of 613, while Massachusetts’ average score of 561 was best in the U.S.
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 the South, according to the Center for Effective Discipline, a nonprofit based in Columbus, Ohio, that provides educational information on corporal punishment and alternatives to its use. That’s a decrease from 2004, when 22 states permitted the practice.
… Numbers collected by the U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights and released in March 2008 showed that 223,190 students were physically punished in American schools in 2006, the most recent year available.
The decision is important because it could affect federal funding for those students. The common definition could also determine which students receive accommodations on standardized tests, such as more time, use of a dictionary or instructions recorded in their native language.
The label matters, because under the federal Civil Rights Act, schools are required to provide English-language learners with additional services to ensure they master English as well as the material other students are learning.
The wide variety in policies also creates headaches for students who move from state to state, or even from one school district to another, as they may suddenly find themselves lumped into a new category.
Now that nearly all the states have agreed to adopt common standards in English and math, known as the Common Core State Standards, some states are striving for a common definition of an English-language learner. The task likely will take years, given the political and policy thickets that need to be cleared.
A common definition would help English learners to receive better educations, said Robert Linquanti, project director for English Learner Evaluation and Accountability Support at WestEd, a nonprofit education research organization based in California, and one of two co-authors of a recent report.
Speakers lingered hours past when the hearings were supposed to end so that they could share their thoughts on the Common Core with Pam Stewart.
The conversation about Common Core standards hit a fever pitch in Florida last week.
Florida’s education commissioner, Pam Stewart, moderated three hearings about the Common Core in Tampa, Davie and Tallahassee. The listening sessions came out of an executive order issued by Gov. Rick Scott. Along with the request for public input, the governor has been distancing Florida from its position as a leader in a consortium to create a Common Core-aligned test.
More than 750 people showed up to the listening sessions. Parents, teachers and activists all took their four minutes at the microphone to tell Florida’s education leaders what they think of the Common Core.
Kentucky is the nation's trailblazer for Common Core math, literacy and English standards.
One of the big complaints critics have of Florida’s new math, English and literacy standards — known as Common Core — is that the standards haven’t been field tested to make sure they work.
While not a field test, Kentucky has been using the standards since 2011. Lawmakers had told state education officials to come up with new standards. Rather than adopt a stopgap, Kentucky schools jumped into Common Core with both feet.
Let’s be clear — for Kentucky, the Common Core is a clear step up from the academic standards it replaced. The state’s old standards got a D from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
“The standards for high school resemble those for middle school,” according to the report. “At times the standards seem to represent a perpetual remedial course.”
“I think it really shifts the debate from ‘Is this a slam dunk? Yes,’ to ‘Should we adopt with additions or with recommendations or with caveats?’” Fordham’s Kathleen Porter-Magee told StateImpact at Indiana’s first Common Core hearing.
But in Kentucky, no one is arguing for a return to the old standards. So when you ask teachers about Common Core pushback, they assume you’re talking about other educators.
“I saw a lot of math teachers who were initially resistant to Common Core at the high school level start to change their mind when they realize there are some changes being made at the lower grades, changes they’d wanted to happen for a long time,” says Ryan Davis, a math teacher at Central.
Nichole Dino and Alexandria Martin, both English teachers at Miami's Carol City Senior High School, say they like Common Core's emphasis on critical thinking. But they hope the new tests won't be biased against low-income students.
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 them to start teaching the new standards over the next year, yet educators remain unsure when, and how, their students will be tested on them.
At issue is Florida’s participation in a multi-state consortium, known as PARCC, working to develop online standardized tests to be aligned with the standards. Several states expect to start administering the PARCC in the winter of 2015. But in late September, Florida Gov. Rick Scott directed the state Education Board to withdraw from PARCC and instead select a new assessment through a competitive bidding process.
“If the test were settled, people would see more of a sense of urgency,” said Kathy Pham, a veteran Miami English teacher who now works full-time as a “peer reviewer” (essentially a mentor) for Miami-Dade Schools. She supports much of the Common Core in theory, but worries teachers will have to scramble at the last minute to prepare students for a new, and largely unknown, test.
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If you’ve got concerns about Florida’s K-12 math, English and literacy standards — or a suggestion about how to improve them — you’ve got until tomorrow to submit them to the Florida Department of Education.
