Three of every ten bullying incidents reported in Florida last year happened in Palm Beach County schools, according to state data. That’s been the case since Florida approved a law in 2008 requiring school districts to report bullying and follow-up with parents — or face penalties. Palm Beach County schools reported one incident of bullying […]
In 2009 Alachua County schools reported 182 cases of bullying. In 2008 the number was 101. But bullying disappeared from Alachua County schools in 2010-2011, according to state data. Except that it didn’t. Instead, 143 bullying incidents were not reported to the state because of a glitch with the school district’s new computer system, said […]
Ask students how often they’re bullied at school and you’re likely to get a different answer than if you look at official Florida statistics. Florida schools reported one bullying case for every 423 students during the 2010-2011 school year — or less than one-quarter of one percent of students — according to Florida Department of […]
Freshman Austin Beaucage has been picked on his whole life. He’s small for his age and socially awkward. But the bullying was never like last month at Coral Shores High School in Key Largo, Fla. “Some senior locked me in a closet in my 6th period and he wouldn’t let me out,” he said. “And […]
Pinellas County schools superintendent John Stewart isn’t sure how the state calculates the number of chronic absentees but says getting students to school more often is a priority, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Pinellas County schools ranked first among Florida’s urban school districts for the percentage of students missing at least 21 days of […]
As many as 15 million students are missing at least one in 10 days of school every year, reducing their chance of graduating from high school or college. That’s according to a new report from GetSchooled.org and researchers at Johns Hopkins University. At a weekend education conference in Philadelphia, GetSchooled and other experts cited three […]
There is no bigger target for school criticism than what districts spend on administrative staff and other overhead. Joe Taxpayer wants to cry “waste!” when he sees a bunch of bureaucrats bringing down six figures at his expense. The Florida Department of Education knows this, and so they have been adding up how much it […]
So you’ve got a list of colleges offering scholarships, grants and all kinds of other perks and you’re trying to figure out the best deal? The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has set up a new website to help college-bound students and their parents estimate just how much that degree will cost — and how much […]
Florida schools do not have patterns of suspicious test results that have plagued schools in Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis and elsewhere, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of testing data from 69,000 schools in 49 states. Only one county, Gadsden in the Panhandle, had more than 10 percent of schools show unusual gains or losses […]
The folks at the Jacksonville Public Education Fund have a terrific post on their blog that adds some context to Florida’s controversial new district rankings. School officials have criticized the rankings as a simplistic measure considering only Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test scores, and ignoring a district’s size, relative wealth and other underlying factors. The Jacksonville […]
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