Florida School Boards Association
ORLANDO — Three hundred elementary schools — and likely at least a handful in Central Florida — will have to add an hour to their day next year, using the time for extra reading instruction, under the budget the Florida Legislature just approved. For the past two years, 100 schools with low FCAT reading scores had to extend their…
The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging single-gender schools and classes in Hillsborough County. The ACLU claims the programs reinforce gender stereotypes and that the evidence supporting single-gender schooling is based on “junk science.” So what does the science say? The results are mixed, as is often the case in education research. Two large reviews…
TALLAHASSEE — Though the Legislature declared that Florida’s community colleges cannot add any new four-year degree programs for a year, the moratorium likely won’t do much in the long run to curb the popular programs. The state Board of Education agreed to spend the next 14 months reconsidering how they approve programs. But it didn’t…
Florida’s new teacher evaluation system is arguably unfair but it is not unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled today, as he dismissed the claims made by seven teachers and their union. The case was the Florida Education Association’s second legal attempt to halt implementation of Florida’s controversial 2011 teacher merit pay law. The teachers union filed…
For the second year in a row, a handful of states experienced significant disruptions in online testing, creating such a high level of distrust with the technology-based process that some districts chose to revert to paper-and-pencil tests in an effort to avoid problems. Florida, Kansas, and Oklahoma all suspended online testing at some point during…
TAMPA — Gov. Rick Scott will bring his re-election campaign to Tampa on Tuesday to tout a new state budget with $574 million in increased education spending along with $500 million in tax cuts. What Scott isn’t mentioning is that while the new budget cuts some taxes, it includes an increase of almost as much,…
Now, in the final week of the session, lawmakers have about $1.2 billion in surplus, bonus money that can go pretty much anywhere they choose. That fact has stirred loose an avalanche of hometown projects, the likes of which Tallahassee hasn’t seen in an election year since 2006. “Think about it: What’s the average size…
TALLAHASSEE — A measure aimed at streamlining the state’s school-grading system and pausing the most serious consequences for some schools is one step away from Gov. Rick Scott’s desk. The Republican-controlled House readied the bill (SB 1642) for passage Tuesday, batting away complaints from Democrats that the proposal still doesn’t give schools enough time to…
Education policymakers today insist that teachers, principals and schools must be “held accountable.” You would assume, then, that they would take every opportunity to ensure that all students who are educated with public money take the all-important standardized tests that are used as the chief accountability metric and that can determine how much educators are…
WASHINGTON — Researchers say the latest data on high school graduation rates is a positive sign, but there is always room for improvement. Federal statistics from 2012 show the graduation rate has reached 80 percent. Even so, 1 in 5 students are still not getting a diploma. However, researchers predict the improvement will continue, and…