Florida School Boards Association
The controversy surrounding a gender-neutral student’s decision to wear a dress — an act that flew in the face of anatomical conventions — raised many questions about the district’s bylaws regarding the dress code, school environment and discrimination against certain students. In coincidental timing, a week after the incident, Leon County Schools familiarized dozens of administrators with the policies…
DetailsThe senior member of Florida’s State Board of Education called for more honesty in test score reporting Wednesday, just hours after the release of new nationwide data showing student performance had slipped in key areas. Fourth- and eighth-grade scores in the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress slid in Florida, after years of steady improvement.…
DetailsTALLAHASSEE — Members of the Florida Board of Education want Education Commissioner Pam Stewart to provide them with more data to help them set passing marks for the new statewide assessment, which continues to attract backlash from superintendents, teachers and parents statewide. Standing by the Florida Standards Assessments and in an effort to prove the…
DetailsParent reports for the first administration of the Florida Standards Assessment went home Tuesday, but don’t expect to be able to make much sense of them. The reports don’t say whether a student passed or failed, as the bar hasn’t been set. Education Commissioner Pam Stewart has said that information won’t be available until at…
DetailsIt’s time to start thinking about changing the constitution. Once every 20 years Florida convenes a Constitution Revision Commission to recommend changes to the constitution for voters to consider. Commissioners will meet again in 2017 and 18 legal, political and voting rights groups have banded together to get people talking about what they would like…
DetailsWASHINGTON — After five years of bitter clashes, Republican congressional leaders and President Barack Obama on Monday night appeared to settle their last budget fight by reaching a tentative deal that would modestly increase spending over the next two years, cut some social programs, and raise the federal borrowing limit. The accord, which must be…
DetailsWhen the Education Department releases its biennial scorecard of reading and math scores for all 50 states this week, Florida and Texas are likely to look pretty mediocre. In 2013, the last time that scores were released, Florida ranked 30th on the tests, which are given to fourth and eighth graders, and Texas ranked 32nd.…
DetailsMost 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…
DetailsThe Florida Education Association and local teacher unions are investigating the legality of the Best and Brightest teacher scholarship program, in which individual bonuses of $10,000 would be awarded based upon teachers’ past ACT or SAT scores. The $44 million program has drawn the ire of teacher unions since its inception, after it was quietly…
DetailsBOULDER, CO (October 25, 2015) – Yesterday, the Obama Administration acknowledged its own role in escalating the nation’s over-reliance on high-stakes, test-based accountability policies. It issued a Testing Action Plan for states, including a section on “reducing the reliance on student test scores through our rules and executive actions,” backing away somewhat from the Administration’s…
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