Where kids still play in the woods
FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. – Millions of students in American public schools are lucky if they get 30 minutes of recess a day. But the students at Wild Oak Explorers spend hours at a time roaming an 8-acre oasis of pines, ponds, and trails not far from the Georgia line. On...OUR LATEST
Three decades ago, dozens of Black families in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami enrolled their children in Florida’s first charter school. They didn’t know it, but they were kickstarting... READ MORE
DELTONA, Fla.– Of all the skills Yaeli “Yaya” Santos could have picked to earn a grade in that portion of her eighth-grade physical education class, standing on her head seemed... READ MORE
Arizona’s politics might be described as “Chaotic Purple,” but 2024 elections proved quite red at the state legislative level, with Republicans making gains in both the Arizona Senate and House.... READ MORE
Updated March. 3, 2025 After a record-setting opening weekend in which more than 120,000 students applied for Florida K-12 scholarships, demand remains high. Step Up For Students, the nonprofit organization... READ MORE
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) created a new measure of socioeconomic status for the 2024 exams. This is a welcome addition, and a better measure of student economic... READ MORE
CLEARWATER, Fla. — The Newton brothers’ reign at Clearwater Central Catholic High School ended on a Thursday night in December when Jershaun, the youngest, played his final football game. It was... READ MORE
Authors Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson distinguished between “inclusive” and “extractive” institutions in their 2012 book “Why Nations Fail.” Inclusive political institutions allow broad political participation and are a... READ MORE
“Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Find... READ MORE
Editor’s Note: This story originally ran on Florida Politics. The dream, the goal, the answer to many prayers is a three-story building that houses seven classrooms, a chemistry lab, a... READ MORE
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LEARNING SPOTLIGHTS
Where kids still play in the woods
FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. – Millions of students in American public schools are lucky if they get 30 minutes of recess a day. But the students at Wild Oak Explorers spend hours at a time roaming an 8-acre oasis of pines, ponds, and trails not far from the Georgia line. On... READ MORE
DELTONA, Fla.– Of all the skills Yaeli “Yaya” Santos could have picked to earn a grade in that portion of her eighth-grade physical education class, standing on her head seemed... READ MORE
SARASOTA, Fla. – When Briana Santoro and her family moved to Florida in 2021, she set out to find the perfect school for her two young sons. She wanted a... 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
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
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
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