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Hillsborough County School District

Achievement GapEducation and Public Policy

National tests bring celebrations, and some cautions, for Florida’s urban school districts

Travis Pillow April 12, 2018
Travis Pillow

We’ve written before about the improving results in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, and the potential for improvement in Duval County.

The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show those positive trends continue. But they also show there’s still work to do.

Urban school districts may have shown slightly more improvement than the nation as a whole, where results were largely stagnant.

The three Florida districts included in the Trial Urban District Assessment results provided their share of bright spots. In fourth-grade math, for example, Miami-Dade and Duval were two of just four districts that posted statistically significant score increases.

In both places, disadvantaged students helped drive increases.

Experts caution against using scores like the national assessment results released Tuesday to gauge things like the effects of specific policies or the performance of district leaders. However, the numbers paint a useful picture of how three Florida urban districts are doing.

Miami-Dade feels the love

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April 12, 2018 0 comment
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Charter Schools

Hillsborough another model for district-charter relations in Florida

Travis Pillow November 2, 2017
Travis Pillow

Florida’s official charter schools conference has convened in Daytona Beach. Charter school operators gathered here have singled out one of the state’s largest districts for improving relations.

Kristine Bennett is the principal of Brooks DeBartolo Collegiate High School in Hillsborough County. She said she has 17 years of experience working in charter schools in the new district. And she said Jeff Eakins, became the district’s superintendent two years ago, has been a breath of fresh air.

“It’s come a long way, and it really does have to do with the leadership at the top,” she said. Eakins has the same message on school choice, whether he’s talking to people in the district, its charter schools, or local private schools. “It’s about serving kids,” she said. “That is so refreshing in Hillsborough County, because I know it’s not like that everywhere.”

Little things can make a big difference. Jenna Hodgens, who heads Hillsborough’s charter authorizing office, said when Eakins became superintendent, he invited charter schools to district-wide principals’ meetings. Several charter leaders reached out to her for clarification. They thought district officials had a made a mistake. After she saw district and charter educators huddled together in one room, Hodgens said, she knew Eakins was serious about bringing all the district’s public school educators together.

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November 2, 2017 1 comment
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Florida Schools Roundup

Florida roundup: Black student achievement, charter schools and more

Travis Pillow June 29, 2016
Travis Pillow

florida-roundup-logoPriorities. The Pinellas County school district plans to increase its focus on lifting achievement among low-income black students. Tampa Bay Times.

Charter schools. The Pinellas school board announces another, last-ditch attempt to save two foundering charter schools. Gradebook.

College courses. Manatee County principals would have the final say on whether high school students can enter college-level courses under a revised student-progression plan. Bradenton Herald.

Special needs. A special needs preschool on the Space Coast plans to add a kindergarten. Florida Today.

STEM. How Monroe County is expanding access to computer science courses. Bridge to Tomorrow. Escambia schools run a computer science camp. Pensacola News-Journal.

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June 29, 2016 0 comment
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Florida Schools Roundup

Florida roundup: Charter schools, magnet schools, opt-out and more

Travis Pillow June 20, 2016
Travis Pillow

florida-roundup-logo

Charter schools. Why do parents choose charter schools? Why do teachers choose to work in them? The Tampa Bay Times interviews a principal. Hillsborough school board candidates are divided on charter school issues. Tampa Bay Times. The Florida Times-Union looks at Duval charter schools’ audits.

Magnet schools. The Miami Herald profiles a principal at Jose Marti MAST 6-12 Academy.

Opt-out. The Sun-Sentinel has the latest on the controversy over whether some third graders, whose parents opted them out of state assessments, may be retained.

STEM. A South Florida science teacher follows in her father’s footsteps. Miami Herald. What would happen if former Gov. Jeb Bush took up the cause of STEM excellence? Bridge to Tomorrow.

Testing. Polk teachers examine district end-of-year exams. Lakeland Ledger.

Diversity. Collier County principals don’t reflect the diversity of the district’s students, the NAACP argues. Naples Daily News.

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June 20, 2016 0 comment
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Florida Schools Roundup

Florida schools roundup: Elections, school assignments and more

Travis Pillow June 16, 2016
Travis Pillow

florida-roundup-logoSchool assignments. Parents should have more say in where their kids go to school, rather than face felony charges for lying about their addresses, a Sun-Sentinel guest column argues. (The author works at Step Up For Students, which publishes this blog, and an earlier version of the piece ran here.) The Escambia school district starts implementing a digital school registration system. Pensacola News-Journal.

Elections. Florida’s statewide teachers union is keeping a close eye on legislative races as they develop. Gradebook. Charter school operators make campaign contributions in school board races. Gradebook. The League of Women Voters weighs in here. Collier County School Board hopefuls debate. Naples Daily News. A Marion school board candidate drops out of her race, citing confusion over residency requirements. Ocala Star-Banner. A Leon County superintendent candidate may abandon his bid, and seek re-election to the Tallahassee City Commission instead. Tallahassee Democrat.

Collective bargaining. Hillsborough County schools look to rewrite teacher job categories after a Gates Foundation grant expires. A proposal would create three classes of teachers: Tenured teachers, one-year contract employees and probationary hires. Gradebook.

Charter schools. The St. Johns County School Board moves to take over a charter school plagued by financial problems. St. Augustine Record.

School boards. Alachua County’s April Griffin is set to lead the Florida School Boards Association next year. Gainesville Sun.

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June 16, 2016 0 comment
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Charter Schools

New proposals for charter school collaboration in Central Florida

Travis Pillow December 21, 2015
Travis Pillow

Three large school districts along Florida’s I-4 corridor are angling for grants that could help them draw nationally recognized charter school networks to low-income neighborhoods.

The Orange, Polk and Hillsborough County school districts applied this month for $2.5 million in funding from round two of the Florida Department of Education’s district-charter collaboration program.

The three districts are among the ten largest school systems in the Florida, and the top 30 in the country. Their proposals, published here for the first time, describe how they would use chartering to combat persistent academic struggles in high-poverty areas.

The potential collaborations break from the charged politics that often dominate the headlines. They represent an approach to charter schools that’s still new for many Florida school districts.

As Polk County schools officials write in their proposal:

The Polk Charter Compact will turn charter school management in Polk from a compliance and coping exercise to purposeful tool for improved student performance in high-need areas where students are not currently receiving adequate educational services.

The department earlier this year awarded grants to Miami-Dade, Duval, and Broward Counties, but Broward’s school board rejected the money, creating an opening for other districts to apply.

Three other districts — Palm Beach, Pinellas, and Pasco — were eligible to apply, but didn’t. Pinellas is the only district that was eligible to apply for a grant in both rounds, but showed no interest.

Around the country, education reformers trying to help more districts and charters work together. They’re also looking at the factors that can draw top-performing charter schools to low-income neighborhoods. With that in mind, the three latest collaboration proposals are worth a closer look.

Bridging the gap in Hillsborough

Hillsborough officials say they want to bring a new high-impact charter school to Tampa’s urban core, where middle school proficiency rates are roughly 40 percent lower than elsewhere in the district.

The district says it wants to share know-how with the charter organization, and help with teacher recruitment and facilities, in a collaboration that could “serve as a replicable model for other districts around the nation.”

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December 21, 2015 0 comment
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Charter school application approval graph
Charter Schools

Some Florida school districts better than others at stopping failed charters

Travis Pillow November 9, 2015
Travis Pillow

As a spate of sudden failures has brought Florida’s charter schools under a microscope, the state’s second-largest school district stands out.

Broward County is home to more charter schools than most states. And no district in Florida has shuttered more charters that opened since the 2012-13 school year. Some of those schools foundered shortly after they opened, uprooting students and sometimes leaving the district on the hook for millions of dollars.

A review by a national organization finds the district could be doing more to curb the problem.

The report, along with a similar evaluation of neighboring Miami-Dade County, sheds new light on a sometimes-overlooked dimension of Florida’s charter school debate: The role of districts in stopping charter applicants who are not qualified to run schools.

Completed this summer by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) and obtained through a public records request, the review finds a “lack of rigor” in Broward’s process for reviewing charter school applications, which seemed “focused on statutory compliance rather than a quality assessment of a school’s likelihood of success.”

Leslie Brown, the district’s chief portfolio services officer, said Florida law ties authorizers’ hands. Districts might spot red flags with charter schools that want to open, but as long as an application meets all the requirements in state law, a district that says “no” risks being overturned on appeal.

“There’s a bit of a gap between what this national association includes in their principles and guidelines,” she said, and “what we have to do in Florida with regard to charter schools.”

Sudden failures have created black eyes for the state’s more than 650 charter schools, prompting calls for change from charter boosters and critics alike. The turmoil became the subject of award-winning investigations by two newspapers, including one by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that focused largely on Broward.

Katie Piehl, NACSA’s director of authorizer development, said Florida charter schools are three times as likely as their counterparts nationally to fail within a year of opening, which has prompted her group to make the state a priority.

With few exceptions, districts are the only groups allowed to authorize charter schools in the state, which makes them the first line of defense. Piehl said district officials sometimes feel hamstrung by state law, but when it comes to weeding out weak charter applicants, some do better than others.

“You’re able to see some districts that are able to, within the confines of the existing law, make high-quality application decisions,” she said.

There are different ways to slice and dice the data on charter school failures, but Broward appears to be ground zero for the problem. It’s seen more first-and-second year closures than any other urban school district in Florida, and significantly more Miami-Dade County, its larger neighbor to the south.

While districts are getting more stringent in their reviews of charter school applications, Broward’s approval rate remains relatively high, according to numbers state officials recently presented to a state legislative panel.

Charter school application approval graph

This graph by the Florida Department of Education shows Broward has recently approved applications at a higher rate than other urban districts.

NACSA’s report acknowledges Broward’s charter school office has a small staff tasked with vetting dozens of applications and a growing portfolio of roughly 100 schools, while contending with a “seemingly ever-changing and limiting state statute.”

At the same time, it says Broward’s “current interpretation of Florida law hampers its work and creates an open- door mentality, yielding approval of applicants that then close within the first few months of operation.”

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November 9, 2015 0 comment
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Florida Schools Roundup

Florida schools roundup: Charter schools, censorship, unions and more

Travis Pillow August 10, 2015
Travis Pillow

florida-roundup-logoCharter schools. The Orlando Science School, a STEM-focused charter school, is expanding to Seminole County with a long waiting list. WKMG. An investigation finds a charter school repaying money it never borrowed. Palm Beach Post.

Teachers unions. Broward’s ex-union leader faces new federal fraud charges. South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Homelessness. Teachers and coaches talk about helping homeless students. Northwest Florida Daily News. More here.

Testing. The Lee school board may launch an independent investigation of its superintendent over GED test administration. Fort Myers News-Press.

Censorship. Controversy erupts after a summer reading assignment is pulled. Tallahassee Democrat.

Budgets. The Gradebook breaks down Hillsborough’s history of tapping budget reserves. Former superintendent MaryEllen Elia answers critics of her fiscal management in the Tampa Tribune. More here.

Special needs. Flagler County schools grapple with the loss of funding for adults with disabilities. Daytona Beach News-Journal.

Facilities. Criticisms mount over Broward funding delays. South Florida Sun-Sentinel. St. Johns elementary students head to a nearby middle school during construction. St. Augustine Record.

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August 10, 2015 0 comment
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