Open enrollment: Thousands of south Florida students are applying for spots in schools outside their attendance zones under the state's new open enrollment law, and some school officials say it could be the start of a trend of children returning to public schools. In Broward County, 11,602 students applied for transfers from their zoned schools, and almost 3,500 of those were from charter schools. In Palm Beach County, 4,505 students applied under open enrollment, and about 500 of them were from charter or private schools. “We are seeing a significant jump in people wanting to come back into the school district,” says Broward administrator Patrick Sipple. “It may be too early to call it a trend. But there has been more interest because of the new law.” Sun Sentinel.
Gifted clusters: The system of pushing gifted students to 16 select elementary schools in Palm Beach County could be changing. This fall, students at 20 elementary schools will have their own gifted programs. Students at 47 others will still be sent to the clusters, which were formed in the 1990s to help the district place enough certified teachers and talented students at the same school to have full-time classes. The benefits for the 20 schools keeping their gifted students include better test scores and potentially higher school grades. The challenge for those schools is putting together a specialized program, as required by law. Palm Beach Post.
Legislative payback? Could the fear of retribution from legislators keep some school districts from joining the Broward County School Board in a court challenge of H.B. 7069? No one is commenting and no threats have been made, but there is a history of the Legislature proposing bills against the interests of school boards, their members and the Florida School Boards Association after being challenged on its education policies. Gradebook. Palm Beach County School Superintendent Robert Avossa will ask the school board at a meeting July 19 to consider joining Broward County in a lawsuit against the state over H.B. 7069. Palm Beach Post. (more…)
Trump's school choice push: President Donald Trump's first budget calls for $1.4 billion to be set aside to expand school choice, even as it cuts the overall Department of Education budget by $9 billion, or 13 percent. The federal Charter Schools Program would be boosted by 50 percent, and Trump also calls for an increase of $1 billion in Title 1 spending for high-poverty schools to provide services for low-income students. Notable cuts are in teacher training, after-school and extended-day programs, and programs for students on military bases, Native American reservations and other federal lands that are not on local tax rolls. redefinED. U.S. News & World Report. Huffington Post. Education Week. THE Journal. Miami-Dade County schools would lose about $40 million under the Trump budget, says Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, and he figures Broward County would lose about $25 million. WTVJ.
Mandatory recess: The Senate Appropriations Committee approves a bill that would require 20 minutes of daily recess in the state's elementary schools. The bill now moves to the full Senate for a vote. The House's identical bill has yet to get a committee hearing. Gradebook. Florida Politics. Tampa Bay Times.
Charter district: The Jefferson County School Board votes Tuesday on a charter school company's application to take over the operation of the struggling district schools. Somerset Academy was the only company that made a presentation that had “a record of effectiveness with similar student demographics” to Jefferson County, where most students are low-income minorities, according to the Florida Department of Education. Somerset is a nonprofit network associated with the management company Academica. It runs 50 schools with nearly 17,600 students. redefinED.
District audit: A state audit finds fault with the Brevard County School District on four points: paying $150,000 over three years to the Brevard Schools Foundation for administrative expenses, not performing routine background checks on 27 teachers, awarding state teacher bonuses to eight ineligible teachers, and allowing transportation employees unsupervised access to inventory. Superintendent Desmond Blackburn says state law does not prohibit payments to the foundation, and the other three items are being corrected. Florida Today. (more…)
Milton Friedman and his free-market ideas may have been anathema to the political left, but he was right about one thing: School choice.
Daniel Grego, the director of Milwaukee's TransCenter for Youth and an acolyte of the likes of Ivan Illich and Wendell Berry, made that case in the journal Encounter. His argument, outlined in a 2011 article we stumbled upon recently, is worth highlighting, in part, because it reinforces a theme we've explored on this blog for quite some time: The left-of-center appeal of educational choice.
"It is time for people on the left to overcome 'the nonthought of received ideas' and admit that giving poor families resources is a progressive public policy," Grego wrote.
The writer helped lead an ill-fated effort, backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to bring more "small schools" to his city. An article in Milwaukee Magazine said he was intent on ending "the longtime war" between public-school supporters and advocates of the city's pioneering school voucher program.
And while he wound up sharing Friedman's conclusions about the benefits of educational choice, he followed a different intellectual path to arrive at that position. (more…)
