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black students

Achievement GapBlog AdministrationEducation PoliticsEducation ResearchSchool ChoiceTesting and Accountability

Education Week: Florida No. 2 in improving high school graduation rates

Ron Matus June 6, 2013
Ron Matus

Florida’s high school graduation rate rocketed 23 percentage points to 72.9 percent between 2000 and 2010, putting the Sunshine State at No. 2 among states for progress over that span but still behind the national average, according to a new national report.

From Education Week

From Education Week

Only Tennessee did better, with a 31.5 percentage point gain, shows the annual Diplomas Count report from Education Week. The national rate was up 7.9 percent, to 74.7 percent.

Education Week, the country’s highly respected paper of record for education news, uses its own formula to calculate graduation rates.

Its findings are the latest in a stack from credible, independent sources that show Florida students and teachers are making some of the biggest academic gains in the country under a model distinguished by a tough, top-down accountability system and expanded parental school choice.

Florida ranks No. 44 in the percentage of students eligible for free- and reduced-price lunch (with the ranking going from lowest rate to highest), according to the latest federal figures. But the Education Week data puts it at No. 34 in graduation rates, ahead of states with less challenging student populations – and arguably better academic reputations – like Washington, North Carolina and Utah.

The gains also come despite tougher standards than other states. Among other things, Florida requires more academic credits to graduate than most states (24 to the national average of 21.1) and the passing of an exit exam (only 23 other states do).

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June 6, 2013 1 comment
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Blog AdministrationEducation LegislationEducation PoliticsParent TriggerParental ChoicePrivate SchoolsSchool ChoiceTax Credit ScholarshipsTeacher Quality

Florida roundup: Parent trigger, Marco Rubio, teacher pay & more

Ron Matus May 1, 2013
Ron Matus

Parent trigger. Another year, another defeat for the parent trigger. Coverage from Tampa Bay Times, StateImpact Florida, Orlando Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Tallahassee Democrat, Associated Press, Education Week, Sarasota Herald Tribune.

florida roundup logoMarco Rubio. Visits a Tampa private school to tout his federal tax credit scholarship bill – and says nice things about public schools along the way. redefinED.

Teacher pay. Maybe teachers will get money for raises sooner rather than later after all. Miami Herald, Palm Beach Post, Orlando Sentinel, Associated Press.

School discipline. Hillsborough district officials are taking a closer look at the disproportionate number of suspensions for black males. Tampa Bay Times.

School turnarounds. Pinellas has five schools facing state intervention, but 11 other D schools may he headed that way, warns Superintendent Mike Grego, reports the Tampa Bay Times. Staff at the five must reapply for their jobs, reports the Tampa Tribune.

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May 1, 2013 0 comment
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Achievement GapCharter SchoolsEducation ReportingSchool BoardsSchool Choice

Charter school + “alternate dimensions” = accelerated science education

Ron Matus April 15, 2013
Ron Matus

Edwin Cruz, 14, is a ninth-grader at Orlando Science School and a member of the robotics team.

Edwin Cruz, 14, is a ninth-grader at Orlando Science School and a member of the robotics team.

Kristopher Pappas, a sixth-grader at Orlando Science School, looks like a lot of 11-year-olds, like he could have a Kindle and a Razor and put a little brother in a headlock. But Kristopher says he wants to be a quantum mechanic, and with a blow dryer and ping pong ball, he proves he’s not an idle dreamer. He turns on the blow dryer and settles the ball atop the little rumble of air stream, where, instead of whooshing away, it shimmies and floats a few inches above the barrel. The trick is cool, but it’s Kristopher’s explanation that fries synapses. “You got to give Bernoulli credit,” he begins.

Bernoulli?

As a whole, Florida students don’t do well in science. The solid gains they’ve made over the past 15 years in reading and math haven’t been matched in biology, chemistry and physics. But schools of choice like the one in Orlando are giving hope to science diehards.

Akin

Akin

Orlando Science School is a charter school, tucked away in a nothing-fancy commercial park, next to a city bus maintenance shop. Founder and principal Yalcin Akin has a Ph.D in materials engineering and did research at Florida State University’s world-renowned magnet lab. His school opened in 2008 with 109 sixth- and seventh- graders. Now it has 730 kids in K-11 and serious buzz as the science school in Orange County, the 10th biggest school district in the nation. Only 26 schools in Florida can boast that 80 percent of their eighth graders passed the state science test last year (the test is given in fifth and eighth grades). At least two thirds were magnets or charters. Orlando Science School was one of them.

The kids are “constantly challenged, which is what you want,” said parent Kathi Martin. One of Martin’s daughters is in ninth grade; the other is in seventh. Mom wasn’t excited about the neighborhood school; the science magnets were too far away; the private schools didn’t feel like home. During a visit to Orlando Science School, she said, something clicked.

It’s “a school where it’s cool to be a nerd,” she said.

In 2006, the Orange County School Board denied the charter’s application. The state approved it on appeal.

Last year, 1,500 kids were on the waiting list. Last month, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer paid a visit.

“This is about word of mouth,” said Tamara Cox, the mother of eighth-grader Akylah Cox. “The parents recognize the value of what’s going on at OSS. That’s why there is such a need and such a calling for it.”

For every bad story about charter schools in Florida, several good ones go untold.

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April 15, 2013 2 comments
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Charter SchoolsEducation PoliticsEducation ReportingEducation ResearchFundingTeacher QualityTesting and Accountability

Florida roundup: Teacher quality, charter school growth, ed funding and more

Ron Matus November 15, 2012
Ron Matus

A “B” for teacher quality policies. That’s Florida’s grade, according to the National Center for Teacher Quality. That’s higher than any other state, notes the Gradebook.

Bang for the buck. Florida students made some of the biggest gains in the nation on NAEP despite some of the smallest increases in ed funding, notes researcher Matthew Ladner at Jay P. Greene’s Blog.

Lawmakers’ ties to charter schools. WFTV in Orlando takes a look. The Tampa Bay Times did a similar but more detailed story last year.

Charter school facilities funding. The Fort Myers News Press takes a look at a task force’s recommendation to increase property taxes to pay for building construction and maintenance at charter schools. Redefined covers the Florida Charter Schools Conference where this was a topic yesterday.

Report on charter school growth. Miami Herald. StateImpact Florida. redefinED.

Promising charter on its way to Pinellas. With little comment, the Pinellas school board voted 7-0 Tuesday for a charter school application that dovetails with a legal settlement over black student achievement. Lots of history here; I wrote a bit about this earlier this week.

More questions in special needs student’s death. Tampa Bay Times.

(Image from simplystatedbusiness.com)

November 15, 2012 1 comment
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Achievement GapCharter SchoolsParental ChoiceSchool Choice

Florida charter school leader moves on to new venture

Ron Matus November 12, 2012
Ron Matus

Cheri Shannon

The head of one of Florida’s two statewide charter school support groups is stepping down to lead a more targeted effort. Cheri Shannon, president and CEO of the Florida Charter School Alliance, is leaving at the end of the month to lead University Prep, a new charter network she says will focus exclusively on low-income students. To some extent, she’ll be coming full circle, having once run a charter school in Kansas City, Mo., that served students who were predominantly black and high poverty.

“This is my passion, my mission. … I felt called, for lack of a better word, to come back in and do that work,” Shannon told redefinED. “This is where I want to end my career, making a difference in the lives of kids who deserve a difference.”

Shannon joined the alliance in April 2011 as its founding CEO. A former associate superintendent in the Kansas City school district, she has years of experience in both traditional school districts and the charter sector.

Her new venture already has four charter school proposals in the pipeline, including one scheduled to go before the Pinellas County School Board on Tuesday. The school boards in Broward and Palm Beach counties have already signed off on the University Prep applications in their districts. The application in Hillsborough is scheduled to go before that district’s board next month, Shannon said.

The Pinellas proposal is for a K-8 school in St. Petersburg with a projected, first-year enrollment of 694 students. The plan is to open next fall. (To read more about the application, go to page 318 of the school board agenda packet.)

The proposal stands before an interesting legal backdrop – a 2010 settlement from a class-action lawsuit that accused the Pinellas district of failing to educate black students in violation of the state constitution. Under its terms, the Pinellas school board set an aspirational goal of having at least 500 spaces in charter schools available for black students.

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November 12, 2012 0 comment
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Achievement GapCharter SchoolsParental ChoiceSchool BoardsSchool ChoiceTesting and Accountability

Agony and accountability in school choice

Ron Matus August 3, 2012
Ron Matus

Education reform, for some of us, is full of tough calls. And for some of us, there can be particular agony in the gray area where race, poverty and both types of accountability – parental choice and regulatory – intersect.

Last week, the school board in Pinellas County, Fla., voted 4-3 against their superintendent’s recommendation to begin the process of closing a charter school in the city of St. Petersburg. The Imagine elementary school, serving predominantly low-income, African-American kids, had just earned its third F grade in four years of operation because of painfully low standardized test scores. Only 29 percent of its students were reading at grade level, according to the state test; only 13 percent were reaching the bar in math. Only one school in the district had performed worse – another charter – and the board had already voted to shutter it.

In the case of Imagine, the board was knotted by a a number of entangling factors, including a vote two months ago – before the release of school grades – to renew the school’s contract. Before the second vote, nearly 20 parents, teachers, administrators and company officials pleaded with the board to keep the school open. They were passionate, thoughtful, respectful – and collectively powerful. We thought their comments were worth sharing, and we excerpted a number of them below. (You can see the speakers on this video here; their presentations begin just before the 41 minute mark. The board debate begins at 3:18:39).

As you weigh the pros and cons, a few points to keep to mind: Black students in Pinellas perform worse than black students in every other urban district in Florida. The number of charter schools has grown rapidly in Pinellas, but not in neighborhoods with large numbers of low-income families of color. The district still isn’t home to a known quantity like KIPP or YES Prep with a record of success with minority kids. And the school board, like many of its counterparts across Florida, recently passed a resolution critical of standardized testing.

Here are the excerpts, edited for length:

Qiana Scott, parent: “You can’t make a decision to close down an institution that is there for the kids based on a standardized test. Because all of our kids are not standard. Kids learn differently. They are taught differently. And at Imagine, that is something that is definitely recognized. So the teachers take that extra time and the extra care to say, “You learn this way, I will teach you the way that you learn best.” So therefore, our kids are learning. It definitely hurts a lot of the parents and a lot of the staff because everybody has worked so hard all year, and to hear that Imagine could possibly be closed down – that’s like splitting up a family. And that’s what we are at Imagine. We are family.“

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August 3, 2012 1 comment
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Blog AdministrationEducation ReportingParental ChoiceReligious EducationSchool BoardsSchool ChoiceTesting and AccountabilityUnionism

Choice nuggets: Islamophobia, a Jeb Bush endorsement and testing mania in Florida

Ron Matus July 9, 2012
Ron Matus

Editor’s note: Today, we introduce a new feature (even if we’re not sure the name will last) – an occasional compilation of bite-sized nuggets about school choice and education reform that are worth noting but may not be worth a post by themselves.

More anti-Muslim bigotry in school choice debates

It’s nearly impossible to go a month without hearing another example of anti-Muslim bigotry in a school choice debate.

The latest example:  Louisiana state Rep. Valarie Hodges, who now says she wishes she had not voted for Gov. Bobby Jindal’s voucher bill because she fears it will promote Islam. “There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently,” she said. “I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.”

The lawmaker’s comments echo Muslim bashing in school choice debates in Kansas, Alabama, Tennessee and other places in the past few months alone. Sadly, religious bigotry has long been a part of the school choice narrative. To repeat what we wrote in April:

The courts have ruled that vouchers and tax credit scholarships are constitutional. We live in a religiously diverse society and this pluralism is a source of pride and strength. We can’t pick and choose which religions are acceptable and unacceptable for school choice. And we should not tarnish whole groups of people because of the horrible actions of a few individuals. In the end, expanded school choice will serve the public good. It will increase the likelihood that more kids, whatever their religion, become the productive citizens we all want them to be.

Jeb Bush endorses pro-choice school board candidate

Jeb Bush doesn’t endorse local candidates often. But last week, he decided to back a Tampa Bay-area school board member who openly supports expanded school choice, including vouchers and tax credit scholarships.

Glen Gilzean, 30, is running against four other candidates to keep the Pinellas County School Board seat that Gov. Rick Scott appointed him to in January. The district in play includes much of the city of St. Petersburg and has more black voters than any other.

I don’t know how much Bush’s endorsement will help Gilzean. He’s a black Republican in a district that leans Democratic (even if school board races in Florida are officially nonpartisan). But I do know this: Black students in Pinellas struggle more than black students in every major urban school district in Florida, and frustrated black residents are increasingly open to school choice alternatives.

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July 9, 2012 4 comments
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Achievement GapBlog AdministrationParental ChoiceSchool Choice

In Florida, a rare opportunity to redefine supporters of school choice

Ron Matus February 28, 2012
Ron Matus

They hold public schools in contempt. They think private schools are better. They want to privatize everything. Supporters of school choice, including vouchers and tax-credit scholarships, have long been defined by cartoonish stereotypes. And as a former education reporter for one of the biggest newspapers in the country, I know how hard it is to redefine story lines that are so set in stone, it doesn’t matter how overwhelming the evidence is to the contrary.

Glen Gilzean

Glen Gilzean

Glenton “Glen” Gilzean Jr., the newest school board member in Pinellas County, Florida, the seventh biggest school district in Florida and the 24th biggest in the country, has a rare opportunity to chip away at those perceptions.

Appointed last month by Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Gilzean, 29, openly supports vouchers and tax-credit scholarships for low-income children, which makes him as rare among school board members as a mouse at a cat convention. We can’t think of another sitting school board member in Florida who so openly supports private school choice options.

Believing that such options hold promise, of course, does not in any way mean easing up on other efforts to improve outcomes for children within public schools. For many school choice supporters, it has never been either/or. Gilzean can show that in coming months as he weighs in on all kinds of decisions affecting a sprawling district of 101,000 students.

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February 28, 2012 1 comment
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