For the Miami-Dade school district, the fifth time's the charm. After being a finalist four other times, Florida's biggest school system finally won the Broad Prize in education today, given to the urban district making the most progress in student achievement. "Miracles are possible, even when you have to wait five years," Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said as he accepted the award, according to the Miami Herald.

The prize is well deserved. Miami-Dade has a greater percentage of low-income and minority students than any big district in Florida. And yet, as we've noted many times on redefinED (like here and here), no big district has made bigger gains over the past decade. The judges at the Broad Foundation took note. So did U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan: "I commend the entire Miami-Dade community for establishing a district-wide culture of results that empowers teachers and students, puts more resources into helping children in the lowest-performing schools, and is helping narrow the opportunity gap."

Carvalho listed a number of strategies to explain the district's success, including a focus on teacher quality and struggling schools, and an expansion of learning options. All of those reforms together helped lift the kids in Miami-Dade. All of Florida should be proud.

If Florida deserves applause for its recent academic progress, the Miami-Dade school district deserves a standing ovation. The five-time finalist for the prestigious Broad Prize is a standout district in a standout state. Between 2000 and 2010, no big district in Florida made more progress in reading and math, even though Miami-Dade has a greater rate of low-income (70 percent) and minority kids (91 percent) than any of them. Over roughly the same period, no big district in Florida made a bigger jump in graduation rates, going from far below the state average to slightly above it.

Against that hopeful backdrop, U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami, (pictured here) offered some particularly biting assessments of Florida’s education reforms last week. In an op-ed for the Miami Herald, the former principal and state lawmaker said school grades were “madness” and “ridiculous” and “nothing but hoodwinking parents and the community.” Then she added:

“Every time a young black male commits murder in Miami, or even at times a lesser crime, I check their school records to see if they have a diploma. Most of them are casualties of the FCAT. I call them the FCAT kids.”

It’s fair to say Florida’s public education system has far to go, even after 14 years of heady change, even after being a national leader in academic gains for much of that time. There are still far too many kids not being educated to their potential, in an evolving system that is still searching – and sometimes fumbling - for the best ways to maximize its potential.

It’s also reasonable to debate how much the FCAT and school grades have contributed to the progress. Miami-Dade has had two hard-charging, highly acclaimed superintendents in a row. It probably benefitted more from the class-size reduction amendment than many districts in Florida. Compared to the other big districts, it has among the highest percentages of students enrolled in charter schools and in private schools via tax credit scholarships.  I think – and these are just the hunches of a layman -- that those factors and many others made a difference.

But I don’t think it can be credibly denied that the FCAT and school grades were essential parts of the mix. (more…)

Editor’s note: Kelly Garcia, who is interning this summer with Step Up For Students, began teaching middle school last year in the Hillsborough school district.

One of my favorite responsibilities as a teacher at the YES Prep West charter school in Houston was the requirement to take small groups of students on field trips of my choice twice each year.

I fondly remember driving Ivan, Javier, Citlaly, Mercy and Frances to one of Houston’s most famous chocolate shops, The Chocolate Bar, where they indulged in gigantic pieces of chocolate cake and foot-long chocolate bars. These trips allowed me to expose my students to a piece of their home city that they had never experienced, and allowed them to show me a piece of themselves that I had never seen. The outings fueled my dedication to them.

Ninety-five percent of the students in the 10-school YES Prep system are Hispanic or African-American. Eighty percent are economically disadvantaged. And yet last month, YES Prep won the first-ever Broad Prize for public charter schools with the best academic performance.

I was not surprised. I was fortunate to have launched my career in education as a founding teacher at YES Prep West, then a brand-new school in the YES chain. (That's me and my class in the photo.) Here are some of the ways its system is different from traditional public schools – and, in my view, more successful.

Choosing the right people. YES has perfected the art of choosing the right people to put in their classrooms. In part because of the system’s reputation for success, thousands of applicants apply each year for a small number of teaching positions.

Applicants are weeded out by phone interviews with instructional leaders from various campuses, and by a sample lesson they teach to actual YES Prep students. School directors often invite the students to weigh in with their impression of a potential teacher, too. By the end of the application process, school leaders are left with high-caliber, hard-working, mission-driven people. YES teachers are committed to working incredibly long hours (usually 12-hour days without a true lunch break), answering cell phones in the evening to help students with homework, teaching Saturday school at least once a month and even conducting home visits for incoming students. (more…)