In their effort to tie teachers’ job evaluations to student performance, Florida lawmakers acknowledge they initially went too far. “We were trying to prove a point, and we became overprescriptive,” said Senate Education Committee Chairman John Legg, who began pressing the issue five years ago. This spring, comfortable that the idea of increased accountability for…
Not everything labeled a ‘school voucher’ in the news and on social media is technically a voucher, and it seems every time news breaks about another private school choice law passing or getting challenged in court, the same argument pops up. A recent exchange on Twitter between the Washington Post’s Emma Brown and the Cato…
Have you been wondering how the U.S. Department of Education would respond if a state passed a law that made opting out of state tests easier, both for parents and schools? Oregon may be about to provide a test case. The state’s House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill in April that would inform parents…
We have held off on reporting on the progress of the Education Budget Conference Committee because the first exchange of offers between the Conference Committee members produce significant swings in funding and policy that are not really indicative of the final result and, instead, can cause confusion. However, the chambers have now progressed in the…
Calling it an issue of school safety, the Florida House nearly unanimously approved a bill this spring encouraging schools to adopt “standard student attire.” The measure, not a Senate priority, died as the legislative session collapsed days before its official end. But now it’s back in special session. How does it live on? It carried…
In its effort to restore some credibility to Florida’s testing system, the Legislature called for a validity study on this spring’s Florida Standards Assessments. One company bid. Alpine Testing Solutions asked for just under $595,000 for the work. Who will cover that price tag? State senators think American Institutes for Reseach, the firm that oversaw the…
Jeremiah Begeansma drew a picture of a blue gun with a box around it to show that was “an important gun” and in a museum. The 7-year-old then explained that a super hero would swoop in before a “bad guy” could steal it and “do bad things.” Jeremiah’s pictorial tale — which he showed using…
The legislature has made some progress in moving forward with the task of crafting the state budget. On Thursday, the House amended the Senates main appropriations bills by stripping out the Senate language and replacing it with the House version of each bill. The House version of each of these bills was then Laid on…
Education Week takes a page from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross — who coined the five stages of grief — and outline the emotional stages of Common Core supporters and opponents. The math and language arts standards turn five years old this week. Florida schools are wrapping up the first school year of using their version of Common…
EdWeek’s annual Diplomas Count report shows that the U.S. high school on-time graduation rate has hit another all-time high with 81 percent of students graduating within four-years of entering high school. You may remember last month another report found the same. Both reports were based on similar data so it is not surprising they found…