Author

Travis Pillow

A former editor of redefinED, Travis Pillow is editorial director at the Center on Reinventing Public Education. He has covered Florida politics, budgets, health care and education policy. Reach him at travis.pillow@gmail.com.

Florida Schools Roundup

Florida schools roundup: Charter school funding and more

Travis Pillow July 10, 2018

Travis Pillow

Charter funding fairness. Emboldened by a new legal opinion that rebuts an Indian River County judge’s ruling in favor of charter schools, the Palm Beach County School Board may exclude charters from a proposed tax referendum, after previously thinking about including them. Palm Beach Post.

School security. Broward school officials can’t figure out how Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz slipped through the cracks when he should have been participating in a behavior intervention program. Sun-Sentinel. An investigative panel is set to receive a briefing on his mental health history. News Service of Florida. Armed officers on campus have become the new normal. Florida Phoenix.

Career prep. Collier County schools get a $3 million grant to boost a manufacturing program. Naples Daily News.

Census fears. A Miami-Dade school board member worries fears of federal immigration enforcement could lead to an inaccurate population count. WLRN.

July 10, 2018 0 comment

Florida Schools Roundup

Florida schools roundup: Charter school turnaround, Sisters recognized and more

Travis Pillow July 9, 2018

Travis Pillow

Historical recognition. The Sisters of St. Joseph, a group of Catholic nuns who took on a racist establishment and discriminatory education laws to help educate descendants of freed slaves in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, receive recognition from the Daughters of the American Revolution. St. Augustine Record.

Visible gains. Visible Men Academy, a single-gender charter school targeting economically disadvantaged youth, describes its remarkable improvement from an F to an A in the state’s grading system over a two-year span. WWSB.

Battling back. A Sarasota high school student recovers from a traumatic brain injury caused by a freak accident during dance practice. Classmates and teachers at her public school, which features a unique performing arts program, have rallied around her. Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Teachers unions. As teachers unions take the state to court over HB 7055, some, like the Leon County Classroom Teachers Association, are pushing to boost dues-paying membership levels above 50 percent. WFSU. There isn’t much money in the budget for raises, but Pasco County’s teachers union holds out hope as labor talks with the school district begin. Gradebook.

Crowding. Palm Beach County wants to build new schools to relieve crowded campuses in fast-growing areas of the district. State officials won’t let them, saying other schools in the district have ample space for students. Palm Beach Post. Rapid growth could soon turn a Lee County high school into a “mega-school.” Fort Myers News-Press.

July 9, 2018 0 comment

Florida Schools Roundup

Florida schools roundup: Civics, algebra, animal cruelty and more

Travis Pillow July 6, 2018

Travis Pillow

Civics testing. Education Commissioner Pam Stewart concludes Florida school districts did not break the law when they shifted state civics test-takers from seventh grade to eighth grade, and that their moves were “educationally sound.” Orlando Sentinel. Sarasota-Herald-Tribune. Bradenton Herald. Florida Times-Union. Gradebook.

Bullying. A mother’s secret recording catches a teacher calling a kindergarten student a “loser.” Miami Herald.

Low bar? Students may pass Florida’s mandatory Algebra I assessment, but still not be ready to do algebra on a college level. Florida Phoenix.

Animal cruelty. Lawyers specializing in animal issues criticize a decision not to prosecute a teacher who drowned mammals in front of his students. Citrus County Chronicle.

Early learning. Tougher tests lead to lower statewide ratings of kindergarten readiness. Orlando Sentinel.

July 6, 2018 0 comment

Florida Schools Roundup

Florida schools roundup: Security, summer jobs, civics tests and more

Travis Pillow July 5, 2018

Travis Pillow

School security. Some Palm Beach County officers still live on K-12 school campuses, part of a decades-old program intended to prevent vandalism. That could soon change. Palm Beach Post. Miami-Dade County Public Schools swear in a diverse crop of new cops to protect classrooms. WLRN. Plenty of applicants show interest in joining the state’s Guardian program to protect Brevard County Schools. But the district says they won’t be ready to go by the time school starts. Florida Today.

Civics tests. Lawmakers and district officials debate shifts that caused some middle school students to take civics tests later in their academic careers, boosting some schools’ A-F letter grades. Orlando Sentinel.

Summer jobs. A Miami program connects students in the Overtown neighborhood with work opportunities. Miami Herald.

Elections. A survey of “influencers” suggests teacher pay is a top issue. Miami Herald.

July 5, 2018 0 comment

Charter Schools

A lawsuit waiting to happen on charter school funding?

Travis Pillow July 3, 2018

Travis Pillow

The Palm Beach County School Board has proposed a new property tax levy to boost teacher salaries and pay for security officers. The initial proposal excluded charter schools, but now they are now fighting to change that.

Much of the debate, including some recent coverage by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, has focused on whether it’s fair to exclude charters, which enroll roughly one in ten Palm Beach public-school students.

The School Board has been resistant for years to new charter schools, often rejecting more than a dozen applications a year because they say the charters don’t offer creative alternatives to existing schools, as required by state rules. The board joined six other Florida school districts last year in suing the state over a law requiring school districts to share property tax revenue with charters.

Charter school parents say their schools deserve part of the tax windfall if voters approve it.

“We pay the same taxes as everyone else,” said Jenny Vargas, whose daughter is an 8th grader at Renaissance Charter School, a K-8 campus in West Palm Beach. “The funds should walk with each child to their school.”

But another question hangs over this debate: Whether it’s legal to deny charter schools an equal share of the funding. It might not be.

Last year, a judge ruled that Florida statutes require charter schools to receive an equal per-student share of any revenue districts raise through optional property taxes. The ruling was a boon for charter schools in Indian River County. But the school board there didn’t appeal the ruling, which means it’s not a binding precedent in Palm Beach County — much less Alachua County, or other school districts where citizens voted to tax themselves beyond the state’s basic funding requirements to pay for public-school operations, but don’t share the revenue equally with charter schools.

This could be a lawsuit waiting to happen, not just in Palm Beach, but elsewhere in the state.

July 3, 2018 0 comment

Florida Schools Roundup

Florida schools roundup: Teachers unions, campaigns and more

Travis Pillow July 3, 2018

Travis Pillow

Union certification challenge. The statewide teachers union has filed a lawsuit challenging union-certification provisions of HB 7055. The law passed earlier this year threatens the certification status of the state’s 13 school district bargaining units in which less than 50 percent of eligible members pay dues. WLRN. WFSU. Bradenton Herald. Orlando Sentinel. GateHouse. News Service of Florida. Florida Politics.

Campaigns. How’s the money race among Sarasota school board contenders? Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Charter school support becomes an issue for a Hillsborough school board member seeking a state House seat. Tampa Bay Times.

School grades. Bay County school officials tout A-F improvements. Panama City News Herald. Duval County’s new superintendent defends civics practices in both her new and her former district. A shift led to fewer struggling seventh graders in certain schools taking the tests, which are a factor in school grades. Florida Times-Union.

July 3, 2018 0 comment

School Choice

Civics shifts, school grades and Schools of Hope

Travis Pillow June 28, 2018

Travis Pillow

Last year, Florida lawmakers created a new program called Schools of Hope. Its goals were twofold: Ratchet up the pressure on low-performing public schools to quickly increase student achievement, and encourage new alternatives — especially proven charter school operators — to take root in struggling communities.

School letter grades released yesterday suggest the first part of the plan is working. The number of persistently low-performing district schools (those rated F, or those rated C or lower for three or more years) fell by about 40, from around 90 to around 50.

There were some success stories that might deserve more attention, like Broward County’s Martin Luther King Montessori Academy. The district created the public Montessori magnet to turn around persistent low performance in a high-poverty school after gathering input from the community. The initiative appears to have worked. MLK’s grade rose from an F to a C this year.

Then there were schools like Matthew Gilbert Middle School in Duval County.

The school has earned D’s and F’s since 2012. Last year, it earned 333 points in the state’s school grading formula and received a D. This year, it rose to a C, bolstered by improved performance on state civics tests. Last year, 144 students took the civics test, and 47 percent passed. This year, only 44 students took the civics test, and 95 percent passed. Increased social studies scores netted the school 40 points in its A-F score this year, and it earned a total of 402 — enough for a C. Without the civics improvement, it would have narrowly missed a C and faced takeover under Schools of Hope.

The Florida Coalition of School Board Members, an association of conservative-leaning school officials, made waves this week when it decried similar civics maneuvers in other Duval schools, as well as some in Polk and Manatee Counties.

Here’s what happened. Most Florida public-school students take their civics tests in seventh grade. This year, some districts decided a large number their students, particularly low-scoring students in low-performing schools, would take their civics tests in eighth grade, instead.

As a result, a large number of low-scoring students in these districts did not take the civics test this year, and will likely take the test next year. The civics passing rates in their schools rose substantially. In some cases, letter grades did, too.

June 28, 2018 2 comments

Charter Schools

Florida charter schools avoid ‘double-F’ closures

Travis Pillow June 27, 2018

Travis Pillow

In a year when A-F grades improved across the state, Florida’s charter schools can breathe a sigh of relief. Not a single charter school faces automatic closure for receiving consecutive F’s.

Ten Florida charter schools have shut down under the law in the past two years. This year will be the first without “Double-F” closures since the state paused school accountability consequences in 2015 during a transition to new academic standards.

The number of F-rated schools fell across the board in letter grades released today by the state Department of Education. Only seven charter schools received F’s, and four were receiving their first grades ever. It’s common for charters that serve large numbers of disadvantaged students to receive lower grades out of the gate before gaining their footing in future years.

There were other bright spots across the state. Among them:

Martin Luther King Montessori Academy, a Broward County magnet school created to turn around low performance, boosted its grade from an F to a C, thus removing itself from consequences under the state’s Schools of Hope law.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools are an A-rated district for the first time in their history, joining a club that largely includes far more affluent districts.
Jefferson County is home to a C-rated school for the first time since 2009, and has no D or F schools for the first time since 2003. Its high school, split from its middle school for the first time, has a B for its first year. A first-of-its-kind charter school conversion in the state’s lowest-scoring district appears to be paying off.

Charter schools – and especially virtual charters – were over-represented among the schools receiving “incomplete” grades in the state’s preliminary release. Complicated testing logistics for full-time online schools may be part of the reason. Schools have a month to appeal their grades before they become final.

June 27, 2018 1 comment