Florida School Boards Association
After nearly two months of negotiating behind closed doors, Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., the chairman and ranking member of the education committee, appear to be nearing consensus on major pieces of a bipartisan draft to overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, according to sources. In what seems to be a…
This special report, “The Chief Academic Officer’s Evolving Role: Powering Big-Picture Learning Goals,” examines the challenges CAOs are facing in school districts across the country and how they are working to improve academics in the age of common standards and digital teaching and learning. It features findings from an exclusive survey of district leaders. Read…
As Jeb Bush edges closer to a presidential run, no issue may better define him than his efforts to improve education in Florida and the nation. To detractors, including the teachers’ unions, Bush undermined public education by promoting issues using vouchers to send students to private schools, expanding charter schools and emphasizing rigid testing and…
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The “Information Superhighway” may soon be regulated as a utility – and that could mean better and fairer access. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced this week that he will seek to have the Internet regulated under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Whitney Kimball Coe, a program associate…
This week is National School Choice Week, self-described as “an unprecedented opportunity to shine a spotlight on the need for effective education options for all children.” Ironically, “opportunity” for America’s schoolchildren is what National School Choice Week places at risk. The further irony is “choice” can mean public tax dollars siphoned away from community schools…
In the opening bid to reauthorize the federal K-12 education law, No Child Left Behind, the Senate education committee took up the divisive issue of testing, in which the overwhelming recommendation to the committee was to maintain the current law’s annual-testing regimen. In fact, only two of the six witnesses who testified at Wednesday’s hearing…
Close your eyes for a minute and daydream about a world without bubble tests. Education Week recently reported that some Republican Senate aides are doing more than dreaming — they’re drafting a bill that would eliminate the federal mandate on standardized testing. Annual tests for every child in reading and math in grades 3 through 8,…
Calif.—For years, Craig Foster, a retired Wall Street executive turned public school activist, has been zipping up and down the Pacific Coast Highway seeking support for a split between Malibu, the mostly wealthy, mostly white city of beachfront bungalows and modernist mansions, and Santa Monica, the equally picturesque but less moneyed city that shares its…
Virginia’s legislators and governor should embrace a total ban on gifts of any value from private interests, including lobbyists, to lawmakers. I say this not because I think politicians can be bought with a free cheeseburger or Redskins tickets. I do not believe that at all, but it seems clear that a great majority of…
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…