Last week StateImpact Florida told you how a middle school in Miami has added speech and debate courses this year to improve reading, writing and speaking. The school’s principal, Bridget McKinney majored in debate and thought the requirements for Florida’s new Common Core-based standards sounded a lot like her college classes. She needed a writing […]
Bridget McKinney, principal at Miami’s Allapattah Middle School, says her students struggle to pass the state’s reading and writing tests. So when McKinney first read the Common Core math and language arts standards used in Florida schools this year, what jumped out was the emphasis on answering questions and making arguments using examples and evidence […]
A national foundation thinks school principals have more to learn. The Wallace Foundation believes that the people who supervise principals spend too much time making sure they follow rules and procedures — and not enough time mentoring them. So Wallace is launching a $30 million dollar, five-year national experiment to test whether students benefit from […]
Broward County schools have won a multimillion dollar, five-year grant to help improve supervision of district principals. The grant is part of a $30 million nationwide effort from the Wallace Foundation to focus on a little-noticed slice of school administration in 14 urban districts. The foundation hopes districts spend more time developing principals’ school leadership […]
Earlier this week we told you about why some students prefer single-gender classes, and a bill which would create a pilot program for single-gender elementary schools. We asked Karen French the principal of all-girls Ferrell Preparatory Academy, a public middle school in Tampa, about the differences in single-gender and traditional schools. Q: I assume you’ve […]
A professor at Teacher’s College, Columbia University has set up a website to allow New York students, parents and educators to post comments about the new state English language arts test. The tests are now tied to Common Core education standards adopted by 45 states — including Florida. New York students have been taking the […]
Two stories today look at how school districts are trying to entice staff to take hard-to-fill jobs. Lee County and Miami-Dade schools are considering the obvious solution: More money. In Lee, the school district has tapped a federal grant to pay teachers earning good reviews more money to work in schools with high turnover rates, […]
Florida is in the process of transitioning to common core standards in public schools. The first full year of implementation is scheduled for 2014-15. 45 states and Washington, D.C. have agreed to adopt common core standards. The standards will measure whether students across the country are reaching certain benchmarks in English, Math and Language Arts. […]
The second day started with Arne Duncan talking about what his agency is doing and closed with Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ stem winder urging reformers to “go big or go home.”
Is 20 minutes enough time to figure out how well a teacher is doing his or her job? That’s what Miami-Dade teacher Karla Mats asked after she received a 20-minute observation from her principal — the minimum time required by the district. Mats was disappointed she was not among the highest-rated teachers and she questioned […]
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