Florida School Boards Association
Florida schools are preparing for next year’s rollout of one of the nation’s most unrestricted open-enrollment laws allowing students to more easily cross district lines to go to school—a practice that has grown slowly nationwide amid both statutory and practical hurdles. Nationwide, 23 states had some type of mandatory, interdistrict open-enrollment laws in 2015, prior…
TALLAHASSEE — Throughout Florida, parents of third graders who refused to take state exams are consulting attorneys about their legal options for fighting school districts’ plans to hold back their children. Florida law prohibits third graders who fail state reading tests from being promoted to the fourth grade, unless they are granted a “good cause”…
Educators have long complained that state accountability systems that use only test scores and graduation rates to rank or grade schools oversimplify school success, confuse parents, and mask achievement gaps. Now, education leaders and lawmakers in states including California and Kentucky have said they want to toss one-size-fits-all school rankings and give the public information…
The state teachers union filed a legal challenge to a controversial education bill Wednesday, saying it violates the constitutional requirement that legislative proposals be limited to a single subject. The bill, SB 850, was signed into law last month. Among other things, it expands the state school voucher program and creates new scholarships for children…
TALLAHASSEE – Florida’s teacher union sued Wednesday to block legislation passed last spring that expands the state’s corporate school-voucher program. The law, called the Career and Professional Education Act, or SB 850, started as an act to expand Florida’s collegiate high school program. But it morphed on the last day of the 60-day session with…
Florida’s teachers union announced a lawsuit Wednesday aiming to block a new law that, among other things, expands eligibility for tax credit scholarships and creates the second-in-the-nation personal learning scholarship accounts program. The suit doesn’t argue the programs themselves are unconstitutional. Like a recent challenge of Alabama’s tax credit scholarship program, it focuses on how…
Manatee County schools are holding summer sessions to train teachers how to set goals — and then use classroom data to meet those targets. On Monday, the district began the first of eight two-day data team training sessions to help school administrators and teachers use and analyze data to make smarter classroom decisions. About 36…
Blame science – and not your teenager – if they’re slow starters in the morning. Teenagers just can’t get eight hours of sleep if high schools starts much before 8 a.m. University of Minnesota researcher Kyla Wahlstrom said that’s because adolescents go through something called the sleep phase shift. “Teenagers are basically unable to fall asleep…
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida Legislature illegally drew the state’s congressional districts to primarily benefit the Republican Party, a judge has ruled, and has ordered them redrawn. Circuit Judge Terry Lewis said in a 41-page ruling Thursday that legislators relied on GOP political operatives who worked in secret to craft the final political maps adopted…