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charter school teachers

FL charter school teachers top 12,000

Ron Matus February 26, 2014

Florida now has more charter school teachers than eight states have public school teachers, period.

The number of charter school teachers and other instructional personnel in the Sunshine State rose to 12,362 this school year, according to recently released Florida Department of Education data requested by redefinED. That’s up from 11,446 last year, or 8 percent.

As we’ve written before, the growth is no surprise given Florida’s fast-growing charter school sector. And the numbers are still a fraction of the state’s 190,000 public school instructional personnel total. But they’re worth keeping tabs on.

Charter school teachers are for the most part non-unionized. And as the charter sector grows, teachers are increasingly weighing whether moving there is worth the trade-offs. (Last month, we wrote about one charter school teacher’s thoughts on that subject here.)

Six Florida school districts now have more than 1,000 charter school teachers within their borders, with Miami-Dade and Broward topping 2,000. This DOE spreadsheet shows the breakdown by district and by personnel category.

February 26, 2014 1 comment

Blog Administration Charter Schools School Choice Teacher Empowerment

Teacher ranks continue to grow in Florida charter schools

Ron Matus September 12, 2013

Ron Matus

It’s no surprise, given rocketing growth in Florida charter school enrollment, that the number of charter school teachers is on the rise, too. But the trend lines are still worth an update.

Last year, the number of instructional personnel in Florida charter schools reached 11,446, according to the most recent data from the Florida Department of Education. That’s up 7 percent from fall 2011, when the number topped 10,000 for the first time. (The number of instructional personnel in all Florida public schools is up 2.2 percent.) Charter teachers now account for 5.9 percent of Florida’s entire teacher corps.

We’ll try to corral the 2013-14 numbers once they’re available in a month or so. In the meantime, check out this spreadsheet from DOE. It shows the number of charter school employees by category, and offers a district-by-district breakdown.

September 12, 2013 1 comment

Florida Schools Roundup

redefinED roundup: Louisiana vouchers under fire, charter school performance in Tennessee, Florida Virtual cuts & more

redefinED staff September 3, 2013

redefinED staff

Alabama: The Rev. H.K. Matthews, a civil rights icon now living in Alabama, says school choice is an extension of the civil rights movement (AI.com).

Colorado: The Douglas County School District offers private school vouchers for students but some residents, policymakers and journalists can’t see anything but conspiracy theories (Our Lone Tree News). Fifteen new charter schools open statewide for the 2013-14 school year (The Gazette).

Connecticut: State Superintendent of Schools William McKersie wants public school choice and more digital learning for students (Greenwich Post).

Florida: Education leaders urge the governor to overhaul the school grading system again (which also applies to charter schools) (Tampa Bay Times). Florida Virtual School is facing hard times as program revenue drops 20 percent (Education Week). Charter schools are under scrutiny from the Department of Education after a ban on charging additional fees and requiring volunteer hours from parents (Tampa Bay Times).

Louisiana: The U.S. Department of Justice files suit to block the state’s new school choice program, arguing it violates court ordered desegregation (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Advocate). The Black Alliance for Educational Options and Gov. Bobby Jindal both say the scholarship program provides a vehicle for low-income students to escape failing schools and that the Justice Department should drop the lawsuit (Education Week, Huffington Post, Weekly Standard). The Washington Post editorial board calls the DOJ lawsuit “appalling” (Washington Post). “Course choice” is underway in Louisiana (Education Week).

Continue Reading

September 3, 2013 0 comment

Blog Administration Charter Schools Teacher Quality Testing and Accountability

Florida roundup: Common Core, school grades, summer learning loss & more

Ron Matus June 25, 2013

Ron Matus

Common Core. StateImpact Florida: Don’t let Common Core squeeze out science. StateImpact Florida: State Sen. John Legg says lawmakers still have a lot to do to get the state ready for Common Core.

Charter schools. New study from CREDO shows charter schools improving nationally, compared to traditional public schools, but with results varying widely from state to state. Coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, Hechinger Report, Charters & Choice, Associated Press, Huffington Post.

School grades. Gradebook: Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho calls on the state to change how it grades ESE centers.

Summer learning loss. Gradebook: High-poverty schools in Pinellas have the lowest turnout for a new district program to stem summer learning loss. Tampa Tribune: Overall turnout for the Pinellas program is less than expected, too. Tallahassee Democrat: Leon offers a summer course for students who failed the Algebra I end of course exam.

Educator conduct. South Florida Sun Sentinel: A teacher’s aide at a Palm Beach County charter school is accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old he met at church. Tampa Bay Times: A former Pinellas County elementary school is sentenced to two years in prison for possession of child pornography.

Teacher data. Gradebook: DOE offers help to teachers whose info may have been compromised.The Gainesville Sun writes up the data breach. So does the Pensacola News Journal.

STEM. Northwest Florida Daily News: Parents pack an Okaloosa County School Board meeting to show support for a STEMM (science, technology, engineering, math and medical) academy.

June 25, 2013 0 comment

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Leaving public school to follow her faith

Sherri Ackerman June 3, 2013

Sherri Ackerman

After 13 years teaching in the public school district, Merili Wyatte went to work for a private school. It was a chance to see her own children, who attend the school. And an opportunity to work in an environment where her religion was a part of the curriculum.

After 13 years teaching in the public school district, Merili Wyatte went to work for a private school. It was a chance to spend more time with her son and daughter, who attend the school. And to work in an environment where her religion was part of the curriculum.

This is the second story in an occasional series that looks at teachers and school choice. Read our first story here.

For years, Merili Wyatte was a special needs pre-kindergarten teacher at a perpetually A-rated traditional public school in Tampa, Fla. She loved the Title I school, her coworkers and her students. “My experience in public school was really good,’’ she said.

But the Seventh-Day Adventist and her husband sent their two children to Tampa Adventist Academy, a 155-student private school with prekindergarten through the 11th grade where Jesus is a big part of the daily lesson.

“I wanted my kids to be surrounded by that … kind of like a filter,’’ Wyatte said.

One day, she found herself longing for that same environment.

Bring up school choice, and most people focus on what it means to parents and students. But as the school choice movement continues to grow, teachers are searching for options that work better for them, too.

Nationally, there are 602,900 private school teachers, 3.2 million district school teachers and 72,000 charter school teachers, according to the most recent figures available. There aren’t statistics, though, that track whether teachers leave public schools for private school, or explain why educators choose a charter or virtual school over a traditional one.

Anecdotal evidence points to a variety of reasons, from a desire for better pay or hours, to an opportunity to try something new or, as in Wyatte’s case, to follow personal convictions and be closer to her children.

Wyatte has a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida in specific learning disabilities and is half way to a master’s. After 13 years in the system, she left the Hillsborough County school district three years ago to teach kindergarten at Tampa Adventist. There she can interact with her son, 8, on the playground or at lunch, and keep an eye on her 15-year-old daughter.

“There’s a boy she likes,’’ Wyatte said. “I like that I can look out my door – and they know I’m looking.’’

June 3, 2013 2 comments

Blog Administration Charter Schools Private Schools Teacher Empowerment Virtual Education

Teachers are choosing schools, too

Ron Matus May 17, 2013

Ron Matus

Parents aren’t the only ones driving the expansion of school choice. Growing numbers of teachers and principals are opting for alternative settings, too.

Their voices should be a bigger part of the education debate. So, beginning Monday, we’re rolling out an occasional series of stories simply called, “Teachers and Choice.”

The stories aren’t hard to find, especially here in Florida. A full 43 percent of students in the Sunshine State now attend something other than their zoned schools. A slew of teachers are now teaching them there. In charter schools alone, the number of teachers has doubled in the past five years – to more than 10,000. Over the same span, the number in Florida Virtual School has tripled – to nearly 1,500.

One of my favorite high school teachers spent 30 years in public schools but now heads a private school in Jacksonville. When U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio visited a Christian school in Tampa the other day, he spoke to teachers who migrated from public to private. On the phone this week, I talked to a teacher in Tallahassee who switched to a charter despite less pay. The freedom to be creative, she said, more than made up for it.

The subject of Monday’s feature by redefinED’s Sherri Ackerman is Carlene Meloy, who works for Florida Virtual. I won’t spoil it by disclosing details, but this quote serves as a nice tease: “Now that I look back,” she said of her old school, “I realize I felt stuck.”

Just like parents, teachers offer myriad reasons for their choices. Along with the benefits, there are complications, tradeoffs, and unknowns. We’ll do our best to explore them.

You can help us. Let us know if you see issues in this realm that are worth spotlighting, or teachers and principals worth profiling. We also welcome guest posts that further this conversation. You can reach me at rmatus@sufs.org, and Sherri at sackerman@sufs.org.

May 17, 2013 0 comment

Blog Administration Charter Schools Funding Teacher Quality Testing and Accountability Unionism

Florida schools roundup: teacher pay, charter schools, school spending & more

Ron Matus May 7, 2013

Ron Matus

Teacher pay. Gov. Rick Scott embarks on his Teacher Pay Raise Pep Rally Tour. Coverage from the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Florida Times Union, Associated Press, StateImpact Florida. Teachers are “fed up with being used as political pawns,” says Pinellas teachers union president Kim Black in this Steve Bousquet piece.

Charter schools. Gradebook pulls up some stats before today’s discussion about charter schools at the Pasco County School Board. An amendment to the charter school bill makes it easier for charter schools to fire teachers, Gradebook also reports.

School security. The elementary school principals in Hillsborough who have armed guards in their schools like them. Tampa Bay Times.

School discipline. Hillsborough needs to follow up on conversations to address high suspension rates for black males. Tampa Bay Times.

School spending. Freeze in financially troubled Manatee. Bradenton Herald.

May 7, 2013 0 comment

Achievement Gap Charter Schools Education Reporting School Boards School 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.

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

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 10^th 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.

April 15, 2013 2 comments