Florida School Boards Association
‘Maintenance of effort’ a facet of law from start’ Ever since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act into law in 1965, education funding advocates have relied on a highly technical provision they see as a safeguard for ensuring money earmarked for the nation’s most disadvantaged students is used as originally…
Attention members of Congress: You’ve come really far on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Please finish the job so schools don’t have to live under the very outdated and pretty much universally despised No Child Left Behind Act (aka the current version of ESEA) for yet another school year. That’s the message…
Since its inception in 2000, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)1—an international test of reading, math, and science—has shown that American 15-year-olds perform more poorly, on average, than 15-year-olds in many other developed countries. This finding is generally consistent with results from another international assessment of 8th graders, the Trends in International Mathematics and…
BOULDER, CO (October 30, 2015) – For 15 years, journalists, advocates and policymakers have cited scores on international tests, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), to conclude that American student achievement “lags woefully behind” other nations, threatening our future and suggesting an urgent need for education reform. A brief published today by…
WASHINGTON — After five years of bitter clashes, Republican congressional leaders and President Barack Obama on Monday night appeared to settle their last budget fight by reaching a tentative deal that would modestly increase spending over the next two years, cut some social programs, and raise the federal borrowing limit. The accord, which must be…
When the Education Department releases its biennial scorecard of reading and math scores for all 50 states this week, Florida and Texas are likely to look pretty mediocre. In 2013, the last time that scores were released, Florida ranked 30th on the tests, which are given to fourth and eighth graders, and Texas ranked 32nd.…
BOULDER, CO (October 25, 2015) – Yesterday, the Obama Administration acknowledged its own role in escalating the nation’s over-reliance on high-stakes, test-based accountability policies. It issued a Testing Action Plan for states, including a section on “reducing the reliance on student test scores through our rules and executive actions,” backing away somewhat from the Administration’s…
Even though the high school Class of 2013 reached a record on-time graduation rate of 81 percent, it appears like the Class of 2014 is poised to pass their classmates. According to preliminary data released this afternoon from the U.S. Department of Education, 36 states saw improvements in their on-time high school graduates rates over…
On the evening of April 29th last year, in the southern Minnesota town of Waseca, a woman was doing the dishes when she looked out her kitchen window and saw a young man walking through her back yard. He was wearing a backpack and carrying a fast-food bag and was headed in the direction of…
Waking up early on a Saturday. Sharpened No. 2 pencils and a calculator. For teenagers headed to a four-year college, taking a standardized entrance exam such as the ACT and SAT is typically a requirement. But it’s far from a universal experience. In 50 of the largest U.S. cities, examined in a new report from…