The Legislature will hold a sixth, and final, round of Interim Committee Meetings this week to lay more groundwork for the 2020 Legislative Session that will convene on January 14, 2020. Several committees/subcommittees will consider bills addressing topics of interest including, among others, health and safety, curriculum, personnel issues, and school choice options. In addition,…
On a recent day at Celebration Baptist Kinderschool, the 4-year-olds gathered with their legs crisscrossed on their multicolored carpet to listen to a book about bats. “What’s that big word we learned?” the teacher asked, referencing a previous lesson about owls. “Nocturnal!” the toddlers shouted back. Read More
Saying the case involves protecting “local control over local schools by local representatives answerable to local voters,” nine county school boards urged the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday to take up a battle about a 2017 state law that sought to bolster charter schools. Read More
The Florida House made clear Tuesday that prekindergarten and early education will receive heavy attention in the coming legislative session, as the state aims to better prepare its children for kindergarten and beyond. “This is where it starts. It starts with early learning,” Education Committee chairwoman Rep. Jennifer Sullivan said to introduce her panel’s two-hour…
A year ago, with school safety still high on Florida’s list of concerns, the state’s school boards association focused much of its legislative platform on increasing campus security with armed officers and hardened facilities. Having gotten much of what it asked for, the association is looking to new ideas for the 2020 session, for which…
Of the 50 states, Florida’s prekindergarten program has the highest percent of 4-year-olds enrolled in the early learning programs. Only Washington D.C. has a higher percentage. Nearly 175,000 little students attended in 2017-18 — 77 percent of Florida’s 4-year-olds. That’s according to a 2018 analysis called “The State of Preschool 2018.” Read More Read the…
Over six weeks, the vandals kept coming, knocking the school system’s network offline several times a day.There was no breach of sensitive data files, but the attacks in which somebody deliberately overwhelmed the Avon Public Schools system in Connecticut still proved costly. Classroom lesson plans built around access to the internet had come to a…
After a state commission found out Wednesday that nearly 200 schools, including many charter schools, have not had armed security as required by state law, commissioners urged the Florida Department of Education to “name names and name people” to try to force compliance. Within two hours, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran agreed to publicly name non-compliant school…
The number of students using state vouchers to attend private schools has dipped for the first time in recent years as corporate contributions have slowed. At the same time, the number of campuses receiving state-backed scholarships continues to grow. The funding allows children to attend largely unregulated and mostly religious schools. Read More
Can talking during snack time and making Jell-O in pre-K help break the cycle of poverty? One of the leading experts on the effects of early education thinks so. A bevy of research touts the benefits of high-quality early education, but Nobel prize-winning economist James Heckman’s most recent published work from the University of Chicago…