Florida School Boards Association
The advent of new Florida academic standards and tests has created an opportunity for the Department of Education to revise school grading rules at the same time it sets test cut scores. Some of the changes int the proposed rule are fairly significant. For the first time, a school’s grade would be based only on…
Frustrated with a variety of issues in public education, nearly 60 percent of the respondents to a Saint Leo University Polling Institute survey conducted nationally and in Florida say they are willing to “pay somewhat more in taxes to better fund public schools in my community.” In the national survey of 1,005 adults conducted between…
Students in virtual charter schools fare significantly worse than their peers in traditional schools, and the picture in Florida looks especially bleak, according to a new study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). Virtual charters provide flexibility that might benefit some students, the report concludes, but right now, “Academic benefits from online charter…
Most of the students at Royal Palm Elementary in Miami have Spanish-speaking families. But those families also want their kids to speak – and read and write – more Spanish in school. So teacher Alexandra Martin is leading her 1st grade class through “Vamos Papa,” with each child reading a passage from the Spanish language…
MIAMI — When protests from parents and teachers erupted against the new Common Core tests here, Florida thought it had a solution: It dropped the tests. But it abruptly switched sources for the exams, hoping the substitute would be more palatable. Now, nearly six months after students finished taking their exams, Florida faces an even…
The Florida School Boards Association has formally adopted a resolution calling on Gov. Rick Scott to waive the use of 2015 state test results for school grades, personnel evaluations, student progression and other uses. The group also built upon superintendents’ request for a full review of the state’s education accountability program, which several groups have…
Florida’s accountability system is broken. Due to its hasty construction, a third of the questions for third-grade reading are not directly aligned to the standards they are supposed to measure. A lapse in the test construction process, moreover, failed to tie the complexity of the test questions to the proficiency levels being assessed. This FSA…
TALLAHASSEE — A stakeholder group representing school boards is formally pushing the state to halt the use of students’ test scores in accountability measures like teacher evaluations and school grades. The Florida School Boards Association’s legislative committee approved a resolution last week calling on Gov. Rick Scott and the state Department of Education to “waive”…
Before a friendly hometown crowd at the Boys & Girls Club of Marion County on Friday, state Education Commissioner Pam Stewart talked about the success and progress Florida public schools have seen in recent years. She talked about improving graduation rates, top 10 national rankings and the importance of mentoring programs. What she did not…
SARASOTA – More than 20,700 state exams in 2015 were not graded because students did not fill out enough answers, compared with about 5,600 similarly ungraded exams in 2014. While 20,700 incomplete exams seem like a lot, it accounts for only 0.6 percent of the more than 3.3 million tests taken in 2015. The Florida…