Florida School Boards Association
The state’s pension fund beat expectations last fiscal year, earning a 17.4 percent return on investments and ending 2013-14 with a market value of $149.1 billion, the State Board of Administration announced Tuesday. That return was stronger than the previous fiscal year’s 13 percent return. All of the fund’s investments paid off last year, the board’s…
Federal education officials have decided Florida does not know best when it comes to school accountability and English-language learners. State legislators, supported by educators and advocates, changed the law in the spring to reflect that students still learning English should not be expected to immediately excel on Florida’s annual tests. They gave the students two…
Jessica Gaspar was born in the U.S. and grew up speaking English at school — but at home, she speaks Q’anjob’al. That’s the Mayan language spoken by her Guatemalan parents. She said she and her brother struggled to practice their English once the school day ended. It’s why Gaspar volunteers at a community center on a…
With parents and students no longer tied to neighborhood schools, the Miami-Dade County public school district offers more options to keep kids in the public system. When classes start Monday, more than half of the students in Miami-Dade County will stream into a school they and their families picked themselves. With charter schools, magnet schools…
No doubt you’ve heard this: ‘Third grade is the year when students go from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn.’ The truth is not so clear-cut, as explained here by Joanne Yatvin, a past president of the National Council of Teachers of English who now supervises student teachers for Portland State University. She also…
Florida is the nation’s second most poverty-stricken state, at 19.5 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty measure in 2012, and reported by the Tallahassee-based Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy (FCFEP) in a new August brief released Monday. Entitled ‘The Condition of Florida by the Numbers,’ the FCFEP paper also notes…
PANAMA CITY — Brandishing an imaginary gun will no longer be punishable at Bay District Schools if the School Board approves additions to its zero-tolerance policy. The recommended additional lines in Bay District Schools’ student discipline policy would prohibit disciplinary actions to be taken against students who simulate “a firearm or weapon while playing or…
The U.S. Department of Education today announced new guidance for schools and districts on how to keep parents and students better informed about what student data is collected and how it is used. In the guidance issued by the Department’s Privacy Technical Assistance Center, schools and districts are urged to be proactive in communicating how they use student…
The U.S. Department of Education is on the verge of releasing the first draft of new guidance on the peer-review process for standards and tests, a document that could exert a powerful influence on how states set academic expectations. Little known outside the assessment world, the process is wonky and technical. But it is an…
Set a goal. Work hard. Then, take a short break to recharge. That’s the thinking behind the Pomodoro Technique, a time management method used by and deadline-driven professionals, including coders, developers and the organizers of the CodeNow camp we attended in Miami. The Pomodoro Technique was created by programmer and consultant Francesco Cirillo in the…