The reason is simple: Charter schools compete for students — and funding — with public school districts, but the boards in those school districts get the first say about whether to allow a charter school to open.
“This is a forced marriage that needs counseling,’’ joked Ralph Arza, a former Florida legislator who now serves as the governmental affairs director for the Florida Consortium on Public Charter Schools.
School board members and advocacy groups, such as Fund Education Now, argue local school boards only have a limited ability to reject charter schools.
The 16th annual Florida Charter School Conference has more than 750 attendees and 300 exhibitors.
Charter school supporters are wrapping up their annual conference today in Orlando.
More than 750 participants and 300 exhibitors registered for the two-day event.
They’re hearing about charter school best practices and teaching strategies that use technology to improve learning.
Over 80 breakout sessions are on the agenda, with titles like “Charter Support Unit: Here to Help You,” “Reinvent the Classroom by Unlearning,” and “Implementing Title I Programs in Charter Schools.”
An example of the information on the Financial Aid Shopping Sheet.
Shopping for college may have gotten easier.
More than 500 colleges and universities in the country have agreed to standardize their award letters to allow students to compare financial aid packages more easily.
The goal of the Financial Aid Shopping Sheet is to help students make more informed decision on where to attend school by providing a clear way to see the actual cost of a particular school.
UCF Professor Stanley Smith says his research shows charter schools perform worse than non-charters when poor and minority students are taken into account.
Dr. Stanley Smith, a professor at the University of Central Florida’s business school, analyzed school grades of Florida elementary schools last summer, examining the effect of poverty and minority status on those grades.
Smith found that “when the poverty and minority characteristics of the student population are controlled, the average charter school performs significantly lower than the average traditional public school.”
Reading instruction is no longer the sole province of the language arts teacher. The standards call for teachers of science, social studies, and other subjects to teach literacy skills unique to their disciplines, such as analyzing primary- and secondary-source documents in history, and making sense of diagrams, charts, and technical terminology in science. A 4th grade teacher in Shell Rock, Iowa, for instance, had his students write science books for 2nd graders in a bid to fuse content understanding with domain-specific literacy skills.
Reading and writing are closely connected, and writing instruction is explicit. Teaching writing has often fallen by the wayside as teachers focus on reading, but the common core demands its return. And not just any kind of writing—writing studded with citations of details and evidence from students’ reading material. Even the youngest pupils are learning to do it: First graders in Vermont are listening to a Dr. Seuss tale, over and over, searching for clues that back up the central thesis of the story.
Henry Frost poses with law enforcement officers while protesting at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. The Hillsborough County school district agreed to allow Frost to attend his neighborhood middle school Tuesday.
After waiting 57 days since the school year began, Henry Frost will be able to cross the street and walk less than the length of two football fields to attend his neighborhood middle school.
Frost is autistic and has several physical impairments, including hearing loss.
After more than 14 hours of meetings to negotiate an education plan and services for Frost, Hillsborough school officials agreed Tuesday to let Frost attend the school of his choice.
“I will go to Wilson. Yes! Thank you and I will write more tomorrow,” Frost wrote on his Facebook page I Stand WITH Henry.
Florida doesn’t have any districts listed among those serving the highest percentage of public charter school students, but the percentage of students attending charter schools is increasing.
Florida has two of the Top 10 Districts With the Highest Growth of Public Charter School Students: Continue Reading →
He and six other council members are charged with making recommendations to the Florida Legislature and education leaders regarding new degree programs and institutions.
At today’s council meeting, Moore gave a presentation titled “The Reality of Student Debt.”
Q: In a nutshell, what in your view is the reality of student debt?
A: The reality is that it’s not as big of a story as the national media and some would have you believe. But it’s certainly an issue of concern.
The rising cost of attending college has had a lot of impact, but there are so many other factors that have driven student debt that it’s not just pure cost.
Student debt (has) remained relatively constant as a percentage of the total American debt. It’s not as scary a picture as some would believe.
Q: From your vantage point, what is the biggest problem behind the debt that needs to be dealt with?
A: I think we need to be looking at student default rates more than the gross amount that students are borrowing.
About half a million people from around the world have been tuning in online to the math lessons of a Florida teacher, according to the Sun Sentinel.
Rob Tarrou, a teacher at St. Petersburg High School, records lessons on algebra, trigonometry, calculus, statistics and other math subjects under his YouTube channel “Tarrou’s Chalk Talk.”
Some videos have more than 33,000 hits so far.
In this video where the high school teacher is rocking a shirt that reads, “5 out of 4 people have a problem with fractions,” Tarrou gives an introduction to equations of parallel or perpendicular lines.
Below are comments from his grateful viewers.
strfiretiger123 wrore:
Oh gosh, thank you so much! You’re a seriously amazing teacher.
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