From AFT President Randi Weingarten, in the latest issue of American Teacher:
There is a narrative seeping into policy discussions, and even mainstream public discourse, that all the shortcomings in public education can be attributed to "bad teachers." Whether it's that test scores aren't increasing' [...]
The latest U.S. News & World Report rankings are out, and for a second year in a row there are no Tampa Bay area schools in the top 100. Florida has 10 schools on the list, which the magazine dubs "gold medal schools."
Tampa Bay has three silver medalists: Palm Harbor University [...]
As president of the Greater Florida Consortium of School Boards, Pinellas school board member Carol Cook recently fired off this letter to Gov. Charlie Crist, asking him to find the money to spare Florida school districts up to $80 million in mid-year budget cuts. Cook told fellow board members [...]
In light of the high-quality schools lawsuit, the big news out of Miami-Dade this morning is very interesting. As the Miami Herald reported, Miami-Dade students rocked most of their peers in 18 other big cities across the country, according to their math performance on the National Assessment of Educational [...]
Schools nationwide would have to stop restraining or secluding students -- in most cases, special-education students -- unless there is imminent danger of injury, and beef up training of staff who use those procedures under a bill filed in Congress today. The legislation comes in the wake of a national [...]
It's official: Clinton R. Herbic is the new principal of Tarpon Springs High, replacing Kent Vermeer. Herbic's effective start date was Nov. 30, but the board formally approved the move at yesterday's board meeting.
Herbic was the assistant principal at Northeast High, making $57,145 a year. His new salary is $79,971. He [...]
After a lengthy discussion, the Pinellas County School Board voted 6-1 today to demote -- but not fire -- a head plant operator who has been written up by his bosses 28 times in 20 years. The reason: the district's progressive discipline policy.
Twenty of Scott Long's 28 writeups were "conference" [...]
President Obama and even some people in Florida think a longer school day and a longer school year are key to making kids smarter faster, but it’s hard to know for sure without more data. A new national report out today seeks [...]
Florida's impressive rise in graduation rates this year was fueled again by what some consider to be a loophole. Some 9,410 students who were awarded standard diplomas in 2008-09 failed the FCAT exit exam but got a high enough score on either the SAT or ACT. That's 7.4 percent of the [...]
Those high schools had the most-improved rates in Pinellas in 2008-09 and also show some of the biggest two-year gains, according to Florida Department of Education data.
Lakewood High jumped 14.4 percentage points last year and 19.1 percentage points in two years, putting its overall rate at 85.5 percent. Dunedin moved [...]
Florida's graduation rate climbed to a record-high 76.3 percent this year despite the exclusion of GED recipients, according to Department of Education data released this morning.
The Pinellas and Hillsborough school districts also continued to improve despite GEDs being removed from the mix. The official Pinellas rate climbed [...]
The national media is all but AWOL when it comes to covering education news, especially when it comes to "school reform, teacher quality, or other matters thought to be crucial for educational attainment,"Â the Brookings Institute says in this new study.
During the first nine months of [...]
The head plant operator who has been written up by his bosses 28 times in 20 years - and whose disciplinary case goes before the Pinellas school board next week - tells the Gradebook he is the victim of a racially motivated principal and a "crooked" district.
"I basically got" [...]
That's according to the latest calculations, which the Florida Department of Education released just a little bit ago. And that's of course based on school-wide averages, not the classroom-by-classroom caps that must be in place next year. You can see every school in the state here.
Steinbrenner High School in Hillsborough is [...]
The half-mill property tax hike that Pinellas voters approved in 2004 and again in 2008 brought the district nearly $38 million last year. And this new report from the Independent Citizens Referendum Oversight Committee details how that money was spent. (It begins on Page 12 of the School Board's latest agenda packet.)
As intended, the [...]
It's well documented that some school district employees are able to hang on to their jobs despite persistent problems. But a case coming before the Pinellas School Board on Tuesday may take the cake.
Since he began working for the Pinellas school district 20 years ago, Scott Long, the head plant operator [...]
Nine Tampa Bay area teachers are among the best in Florida, according to a new analysis of FCAT scores conducted for one of Jeb Bush’s education foundations.
Last year, Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education put out lists of top teachers based on a single year’s worth of data [...]
The plaintiffs and lawyers in the high-quality-schools lawsuit say their effort is non-partisan, but there are a lot of big-name Democrats with close ties to it.
Co-counsel Jon Mills is a former Democratic House speaker, and some of the other lawyers on board work for Southern Legal Counsel, a public interest law firm [...]
From today's editorial in the Orlando Sentinel:
Voters have realized the goal of shrinking class sizes. But at the cost of punching school bus-sized holes in the state budget - and without enough evidence that lower class sizes led to improved scholastic performance. Lawmakers must act to loosen the financial [...]
Florida's efforts to begin rating teacher preparation programs based on FCAT scores - which The Gradebook reported first last week - is turning some heads nationally.
The Flypaper blog gives partial credit to Obama's education secretary because of his support for such rating systems. Meanwhile, education researcher Greg [...]
This story from Collier County made the Naples Daily News yesterday and detentionslip.org today - a sure sign that it's nationally embarrassing. All in all, 10 middle school students were given 1-day, in-school suspensions. We couldn't help but think of yesterday's development in the Islam-is-of-the-devil story in Alachua.
Just stupid pranks in Collier?' [...]
Message today from Patricia Levesque, executive director of Jeb Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future. Some excerpts:
As we gather with family and friends this week to give thanksgiving and usher in the 2009 holiday season, let us take a moment to thank the educators who make a difference in the' [...]
A revised draft of the Pinellas school district's 2010 legislative agenda includes a few interesting changes - all suggested by school board members at last week's workshop.
It now begins with an excerpt from Article IX of the Florida Constitution - the excerpt that says it's a "paramount duty" of the state to make [...]
Florida is one of only 11 states that have all the right pieces in place to track student progress from kindergarten through college, the Data Quality Campaign says in a new report.
[...]Florida Attorney General (and Republican gubernatorial candidate) Bill McCollum issued this statement a few minutes ago about the high-quality schools lawsuit:
These lawsuits appear to be driven by political and financial motives with little or no regard to educating our children. Florida's focus must be on making progress [...]
That's according to the Center for Education Reform, a group that likes charter schools a whole bunch and keeps good tabs on the numbers.
According to its latest stats, released today, Florida has 413 charters and they enroll 131,183 students - which is about 5 percent of all students.
Florida ranks No. 3 in [...]
As if buying classroom supplies wasn't burden enough, a fair number of teachers say they occassionally buy food for students who don't get enough to eat at home, according to a national report released this morning.
Sixty-two percent of teachers surveyed said some students routinely come to school hungry, says the report from Save [...]
On Friday night, the state released more FCAT-based data rating the effectiveness of Florida's teacher preparation program - and it shows that it was in fact a good idea to take a grain of salt with the first batch of numbers that [...]
On Wednesday, a group of parents and parents advocacy groups filed suit against the state, charging that it had not lived up to a constitutional mandate to provide high quality schools. On Tuesday, several members of the group and several of their attorneys met with [...]
If the new high-quality-schools lawsuit hinged on Florida science scores alone, it'd probably be a slam dunk.
"Florida students are pretty much last in the nation for science," says a power point presentation that Todd Clark, the Department of Education bureau chief for curriculum and instruction, gave to a statewide education group' [...]
The Florida Department of Education is looking at FCAT scores to help gauge the effectiveness of the state’s teacher preparation programs. And according to its first analysis, the University of South Florida College of Education doesn’t look so good by comparison.
A Largo man who says he was struck by Pinellas school buses in two separate incidents three months apart is suing the Pinellas County School Board.
Matthew Magness, 24, was a passenger in a car in Clearwater when it was struck by a bus in October 2008, says a lawsuit filed in [...]
Florida's application for a share of the $4.35 billion federal Race to the Top fund could become a $1 billion request, Florida Education Commissioner Eric J. Smith told reporters in a conference call yesterday. Federal guidelines say big states like Florida should aim for changes in the $350 million to $700 range, but' [...]
Florida Education Commissioner Eric J. Smith, a defendant in the education lawsuit filed this morning, tonight issued this statement in response:
“It’s unfortunate that this lawsuit diminishes the significant progress that has been made by our children over the last decade and simply ignores the performance of a state that [...]
Florida Democrats can't get enough of the new lawsuit.
From House Democratic Leader Franklin Sands: "Not only are Florida schools inadequately funded, but the state's school accountability system is in need of serious repair. It's high time for Florida's education accountability system to be updated so that it no longer'" [...]
By a 6-1 vote, Janet Clark was elected the new chairwoman of the Pinellas County School Board this morning, replacing Peggy O'Shea. Mary Brown cast the dissenting vote.
Carol Cook was elected vice chairwoman.
The positions are largely ceremonial, with the chair essentially running board meetings.
"I'm okay with it," [...]
The Pinellas school district wants the 2010 Legislature to restore per-pupil funding to May 2007 levels, according to a draft legislative program the School Board will discuss at Tuesday's workshop. Per-pupil funding for Pinellas was at $7,396 back then. It's at $6,908 now.
The district also wants lawmakers to provide more money [...]
About one third of McDonald Elementary School in Seffner suffered heavy smoke damage from a fire this morning and another third has moderate smoke damage, the St. Petersburg Times is reporting.
A district press release says "plans are being made to relocate primary grade students to the cafeteria and media center next" [...]
Oops. Double oops.
An employee at the Pinellas school district sent an automated phone message today to thousands of parents and staff, reminding them about a fingerprinting appointment. But there was one big problem: They don't have a fingerprinting appointment. The message, at 11:12 a.m., was only supposed to go to employees' [...]
Pinellas might spend more than most of the other big districts on general administration. But its own analysis shows that when it comes to in-the-classroom spending, its numbers fall in the mid-range.
Among the 12 biggest districts in 2008-09, Pinellas ranked at either No. 5 or [...]
Pinellas school board member Nina Hayden (at far left)Â lands some political endorsements in her bid for state senate, including from fellow board member Linda Lerner (near left).
[...]Florida has two months before it submits its Race to the Top application. But if this presentation to the state Board of Education yesterday is any indication, a whole bunch of teacher quality initiatives are being looked at by the Florida Department of Education. Among them: Finding ways to put more high-performing teachers [...]
That's according to final guidelines, released yesterday by the U.S. Department of Education. The "notice inviting applications" says on Page 30 that the USDOE developed "nonbinding budget ranges" to help states shape their proposals. Florida, California, New York and Texas are in Category I, which means they should [...]
As Tuesday's St. Petersburg Times story on Pinellas administration costs pointed out, we asked the district for two lists: 1) District employees, not counting teachers and school-level administrators, who made more than $70,000 a year last year 2) Similar employees for this year. The number of such employees dropped from 91 [...]
Parents, the application period for Pinellas school choice programs (magnets, fundamentals, career academies) for the 2010-11 school year is just around the corner, from Jan. 9 to Jan. 29. And this year, there's a new wrinkle -- an online application process. Read all the details here.
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' [...]Before he died unexpectedly on Oct. 20, nationally known education researcher Gerald Bracey (bestower of the Rotten Apple awards) took fresh aim at President Obama's education agenda. In his 18th and final Bracey Report, he followed up on another researcher who suggested Obama [...]
