{"id":23421,"date":"2015-03-16T02:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T06:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=23421"},"modified":"2015-03-15T22:47:29","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T02:47:29","slug":"testing-school-choice-pe-a-town-hall-conversation-about-florida-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2015\/03\/16\/testing-school-choice-pe-a-town-hall-conversation-about-florida-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Testing, School Choice, PE: A Town Hall Conversation About Florida Education"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/video.pbs.org\/viralplayer\/2365401829\" height=\"376\" width=\"512\" seamless=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This week, PBS is launching a new documentary series &#8220;180 Days.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>One of the films focuses on Hartsville, South Carolina, a rural and poor district which has managed to become one of the highest rating school districts according to South Carolina&#8217;s ranking.<\/p>\n<p>Tampa public media station WUSF hosted a town hall meeting at Artz 4 Life Academy in Clearwater last week to screen a portion of the movie and to discuss education issues. Artz 4 Life is an after-school arts and life coaching program.<\/p>\n<p>Big on the mind of those who attended was Florida&#8217;s new test, the Florida Standards Assessments. The test is linked to Florida&#8217;s new Common Core-based math and language arts standards, which outline what students should know by the end of each grade.<\/p>\n<p>But parents were worried the new test is expected to be tougher, and must be taken on a computer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We went from FCAT to FSA and that\u2019s worse than what we were already at,&#8221; said mom of three Lisa Hewitt. &#8220;We set our students up to fail\u2026If they weren\u2019t doing so well in FCAT why would we develop another test that\u2019s worse?<\/p>\n\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And most of my students \u2013 my 5<sup>th<\/sup> grade student \u2013 is going to be taking that on a computer that he doesn\u2019t really even know how to operate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>School choice was also a top concern &#8212; some parents wanted access to better arts program &#8212; and a reduction in the number of days of physical education classes or recess time.<\/p>\n<p>StateImpact Florida was on the panel at the town hall. Listen to the excerpted version of the discussion.<\/p>\n<p>And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/black-culture\/shows\/list\/180-days\/home\/\">to learn more about &#8220;180 Days: Hartsville,&#8221; click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_23422\"  class=\"wp-caption module image center\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"Rashon and Mr. Brown, two people featured in the documentary &quot;180 Days: Hartsville.&quot; Florida public media stations will air the movie this month. Check local listings. \" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2015\/03\/Rashon-Mr-Brown-credit-Clevis-Harrison.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-23422\" alt=\"Rashon and Mr. Brown, two people featured in the documentary &quot;180 Days: Hartsville.&quot; Florida public media stations will air the movie this month. Check local listings. \" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2015\/03\/Rashon-Mr-Brown-credit-Clevis-Harrison-620x413.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"413\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2015\/03\/Rashon-Mr-Brown-credit-Clevis-Harrison-620x413.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2015\/03\/Rashon-Mr-Brown-credit-Clevis-Harrison-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Clevis Harrison \/ PBS<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rashon and Mr. Brown, two people featured in the documentary &quot;180 Days: Hartsville.&quot; Florida public media stations will air the movie this month. Check local listings.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, PBS is launching a new documentary series &#8220;180 Days.&#8221; One of the films focuses on Hartsville, South Carolina, a rural and poor district which has managed to become one of the highest rating school districts according to South Carolina&#8217;s ranking. Tampa public media station WUSF hosted a town hall meeting at Artz 4 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":23422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[962,657,983,1008,1006],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23421"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23421"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23426,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23421\/revisions\/23426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}