This educator skipped the traditional teacher route and headed straight into entrepreneurship
DAVENPORT, Fla. – Valeria Oquendo didn’t set out to be an entrepreneur. “Ms. V,” as her students call her, had wanted to be a teacher since she was a teenager. On her way to an elementary education degree, she interned at a public school and, initially, those dreams became even...OUR LATEST
When Constantine and Aliona Shulikov left the former Soviet Union as children to escape religious persecution three decades ago, public education there was one-size-fits-all. Students attended assigned cookie-cutter government schools... READ MORE
SANFORD, Florida – Charisma Lowery loves fractions, which is not something you hear every day from a third grader, but she does. Mixed fractions, improper fractions – bring ’em on.... READ MORE
The television classic “King of the Hill” included a character known as Dale, who despite being a conspiracy theorist is entirely oblivious to the fact that that his wife is... READ MORE
David Brooks has a piece in the Atlantic called How the Ivy League Broke America: The meritocracy isn’t working We need something new that is generating a lot of... READ MORE
Two South Carolina parents are fighting to reclaim the power to direct their children’s education after a state Supreme Court ruling ripped it away only weeks into the new school... READ MORE
TAMPA, Fla. — With 16 dormer windows that peek out from all sides of the roof and a wrap-around porch, the building looks more like a place to relax than... READ MORE
During World War II the British kept a group of stately manors for high-ranking German military prisoners. The British treated them well in these gilded cages, giving them full access... READ MORE
Education is no longer about students sitting in rows of desks from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. And school choice, the term supporters used for years to describe the movement... READ MORE
For we who grew up tall and proud In the shadow of the mushroom cloud Convinced our voices can’t be heard We just want to scream it louder and louder... READ MORE
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LEARNING SPOTLIGHTS
Author! Author! Charisma loves school so much she wrote a book about it
SANFORD, Florida – Charisma Lowery loves fractions, which is not something you hear every day from a third grader, but she does. Mixed fractions, improper fractions – bring ’em on. Charisma, 7, loves fractions so much that one morning while in the second grade, she jumped out of her mom’s... READ MORE
TAMPA, Fla. — With 16 dormer windows that peek out from all sides of the roof and a wrap-around porch, the building looks more like a place to relax than... READ MORE
CLEARWATER, Fla. – The orphans in a tiny town in Tanzania left the biggest impression on Sarah Williams. They were so cute and kind and happy. And curious. The children... READ MORE
IDEAS & INNOVATIONS
Rising parent demand stretches Florida’s Personalized Education Program to its limit for 2024-25
Florida’s scholarship program for K-12 students who don’t attend school full-time has turned on the “no vacancy” sign. The Personalized Education Program operates as an education savings account that allocates an average of $8,000 per student for approved education-related expenses. It has reached its statutory capacity of 60,000 students for... READ MORE
Blazing Stars, blazing trails
DADE CITY, Fla. – LaTania Scott and Kameeka Shirley were former public school teachers who wanted something different when they opened their own school in January 2023. Something … authentically Montessori … accessible to families from all walks of life … embedded with the autonomy that’s often missing from traditional... READ MORE
Education is no longer about students sitting in rows of desks from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. And school choice, the term supporters used for years to describe the movement... READ MORE
Education Next published a piece recently by Holly Korbey called The Tutoring Revolution, which reads in part: Recent research suggests that the number of students seeking help with academics is... READ MORE
TAMPA, Florida — The 22 high schoolers at Integrity Tabernacle Christian Academy donned their school T-shirts and left at dawn for the two-hour bus trip from near Orlando to ride... READ MORE
Some of the most valuable learning experiences happen outside the classroom. Public education is evolving to support more learning by doing. READ MORE
In the early days of education savings accounts, several of our intrepid Scooby-gang members wrote and spoke about user reviews as the future of “accountability.” In a multi-vendor system, we... READ MORE
Despite calls for reform and waves of attempted transformation, key features of American schools have been remarkably stable for more than a century. Students spend six or so hours... READ MORE
A surefire way to get heads nodding at an education policy conference is to call for dismantling the Carnegie unit. The question, and a legitimate fear, is whether efforts to... READ MORE
An episode of Paul MM Cooper’s outstanding documentary podcast series “The Fall of Civilizations” recounts the history of Carthage, which includes details of wars fought between the Carthaginians and Syracuse... READ MORE
U.S. public education has had three primary eras. The first era reflected the needs of a sparsely populated rural agrarian society. Most children were homeschooled and literacy focused primarily on... READ MORE
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