Florida School Boards Association
TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Department of Education reviewed two drafts of an ostensibly independent report on the validity of the state’s controversial new exams, and received the final report the night before it was released to the public, a representative of the company that performed the study and state officials said on Thursday. An official…
TALLAHASSEE — A key state senator said Thursday it’s time to stop harping on the problems that arose during state standardized testing earlier this year because there’s little the Legislature can do to fix it now anyway. Sen. John Legg, who chairs the chamber’s pre-kindergarten to 12th grade education committee, said it’s not worth entertaining…
TALLAHASSEE — Florida is starting to pull apart as its economy rebounds, as some areas bounce back while other largely rural areas face persitent low wages and poverty. “When things were bad, the whole state was uniformly in a bad situation,” chief state economist Amy Baker told a panel of Senate budget-writers Thursday. “As we…
Gov. Rick Scott’s education team is promising a “historic” increase in per-student spending in Florida schools next year. But to do that, Scott’s advisers want to shift more of the burden of paying for schools from the state to local homeowners through higher property taxes, setting up a new confrontation with the Republican-controlled Senate. “I…
With Florida legislative committees getting started, the state School Boards Association is putting the finishing touches on its legislative priority package for the new session. It’s focusing a lot of its attention on testing and accountability as it presents a proposal to members before formal adoption. Some of the ideas have been talked about before,…