Florida School Boards Association
A weak economy appears to have at least one upside: Schools are able to hire more effective teachers, according to new research. Teachers hired during recessions were significantly more effective, as judged by their students’ performance on standardized tests, than teachers hired during better economic times, according to working paper published this week by the…
The school day for gymnast Tyler Harriman begins shortly after 6 a.m. He squeezes in two hours of classes online before heading to the gym for a full day of practice. When he returns home at 5 p.m., Tyler said, “I eat dinner, take a shower and go and do school until about 10 p.m.”…
If there was a hot education topic in Florida this spring, it was student testing. But not in the state House of Representatives. There, under the guidance of K-12 Committee Chairwoman Janet Adkins, the talk focused on collared shirts and khaki shorts. Citing the need to improve school security, Adkins sought to persuade districts to…
They might ridicule the idea. But plenty of Florida teachers have contacted their districts, the state Department of Education and, yes, even reporters who have written about the new Best and Brightest scholarship asking how they could get theirs. Even for a year, up to $10,000 is nothing to sneeze at, after all. (The amount…
In Beyond Fiction, we outlined why devoting instructional time to informational reading was as important to building literacy skills as reading fiction texts— a fact that was made all too clear in international benchmarks and national surveys which showed American adults performing abysmally on document or informational literacy. How to help adults who lack these basic…
While we’re on the subject of what today’s students need to be successful in the future, the University of Chicago’s Consortium on Chicago School Research recently released a comprehensive review of what research, policy and practice have identified as crucial elements of a child’s development and growth into a mature, productive and thriving adult. Read…
Much is known about the tools high school graduates need to do well in college (Adelman, 1999 and 2006; Hull, 2010; Klepfer & Hull, 2012). We know much less about the impact of high school on career readiness, however. This study looks at the credentials and high school experiences of non-college going high school graduates…
Through 2014-15, Florida school district had the ability to set teacher evaluation ratings the student performance results they received. That flexibility no longer exists for the teachers of classes that include state tests. The Florida Board of Education on Thursday adopted a new rule connecting value-added model results to evaluation rankings, from highly effective through…
The State Board of Education has approved a new statewide standard for the test-based portion of teacher evaluations. State law requires that teachers are evaluated each year. That evaluation must include how well that teacher’s students performed on standardized exams — and whether they did better or worse than expected, based on a complex statistical formula. That formula…
The chairman and vice chairman of the Florida Senate Education Appropriations committee have challenged education commissioner Pam Stewart’s plans to distribute $60 million in classroom technology funding without conducting an independent needs assessment. Gov. Rick Scott vetoed the $3 million study, saying it was duplicative of other plans. Within their budget bill, lawmakers had made the review a…