Charter schools. The Collier school board narrowly votes not to renew a struggling charter school's contract. Naples Daily News.
Leadership. StateImpact talks to Palm Beach's new chief. Lee schools begin a search for a new superintedent. Fort Myers News-Press.
Campaigns. Hillsborough's new slate of school board candidates includes a married couple. Tampa Tribune.
Teacher jobs. Teachers take contract concerns and other issues to Miami-Dade's superintendent during a homeowners' meeting. Naked Politics. How far does a school district have to go to find a fired teacher a new job? Gradebook.
School boards. The Sarasota school board will take up its budget, a charter school application and a plan to eliminate out-of-school suspensions. Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Alachua's school board will take over a parenting program. Gainesville Sun.
CAPE. High schools help stoke students' interest in robotics and advanced manufacturing. Daytona Beach News-Journal.
Prayer. Residents urge the Okaloosa school board to resume prayers before its meetings. Northwest Florida Daily News.
Legislation. Testing and choice may be on the Florida Schools Boards Association's legislative agenda. Gradebook. (more…)
Lawsuits. A judge decides parents of children on Florida tax credit scholarships can have the status of a full-blown party to a lawsuit challenging the program's constitutionality. redefinED. News Service of Florida. Palm Beach Post. Times/Herald. The program is administered by organizations like Step Up For Students, which co-hosts this blog.
Career education. A collaborative effort between schools and industry groups is expected to launch new manufacturing career academies in five Northwest Florida school districts. Panama City News Herald.
Tax credit scholarships. The program is a "win-win" for public education, a Sarasota school board member writes in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
Class size. A rule giving schools of choice more flexibility under state class-size mandates helps Brevard schools comply. Florida Today.
Teach for America. The organization plans to bring recruits to Orange County schools next year. Orlando Sentinel.
Testing. State lawmakers are already floating ideas to address concerns about excessive testing. Tampa Bay Times.
Public records. A group that picks hundreds of public-records fights has targeted charter schools, including one in Southwest Florida. Naples Daily News.
Aspirations. Charter schools and high school sports culture figure into a Tampa Bay Times feature on the football-fueled hopes of children in the tiny town of Pahokee in interior South Florida.
Catholic schools. A Tampa Catholic school student takes part in a mission trip to help Indian tribes in South Dakota. Tampa Tribune.
Charter schools. Hillsborough's superintendent tells parents the district won't close charter schools it is scrutinizing, but may take over their operations. Gradebook. An Orlando TV station airs claims, but little evidence, that charter schools are promoting "resegregation." WFTV.
CAPE. The Hernando school district prepares to launch an aerospace career academy. Tampa Bay Times. The Okaloosa school district may be among the first in the country to combine an Advanced Placement course with an industry certification course. Northwest Florida Daily News.
Parental choice. Families should have access to options like Florida's Personal Learning Scholarship Accounts, the Tampa Tribune writes in an editorial.
Campaigns. A Manatee school board candidate is accused of mimicking a logo of a district facility in her campaign materials. Bradenton Herald. The Florida Times-Union profiles a four-way school board race in Duval. The Tampa Tribune profiles a four-way race in Hillsborough. Pinellas candidates' "claws came out" during a recent Tiger Bay meeting. Tampa Tribune.
Common Core. Gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist says the state should pause accountability measures while the new standards take effect. StateImpact.
Closures. The Palm Beach school board considers closing schools that are below capacity. Sun-Sentinel.
Superintendents. Hillsborough's superintendent gets high ratings from the school board. Tampa Tribune.
Tax credit scholarships. Students with higher incomes can now qualify for partial scholarships through Florida's program, but how does that compare nationally? EdWeek. More on the Legislation from the South Florida Times. GTN News.
Common Core. Parents sound off on the standards in Hillsborough. Tampa Tribune.
Facilities. Two Broward charter schools can stay open after providing the district certificates of occupancy for their buildings. Sun-Sentinel. The Hernando school board votes to patch a leaky roof. Tampa Bay Times.
Magnet schools. The Palm Beach County school district reopens applications for an art and music program. Palm Beach Post.
Career education. Outgoing Senate President Don Gaetz laments that his hometown school district, where CAPE initiatives were born, has slipped to the "middle of the pack" in issuing industry certificates. Northwest Florida Daily News.
Summer. A new Hillsborough program helps students who fall behind catch up to their peers. Tampa Tribune. The Pinellas Summer Bridge program is aimed at helping struggling students avoid learning loss while school's out. Tampa Bay Times.
Transportation. The Bay County schools superintendent learns a "valuable lesson in securing our buses" after one is stolen by a 12-year-old. Panama City News Herald.
Employee conduct. A teacher is suspended after being accused of improperly restraining a special needs student. Fort Myers News-Press. An assistant principal acquitted for failing to report child abuse fights for his job. Bradenton Herald.
Unions. The Sun-Sentinel writes up the lawsuit in the Palm Beach teachers union election.
Graduation. Some Pasco students won't have DVDs of their high school graduation. Tampa Bay Times.
Editor's note: Joe McTighe is executive director of the Council for American Private Education. This is the third post in our #schoolchoiceWISH series.
Joe McTighe
As children, my sister Moo and I were regularly prompted at holiday gatherings to sing “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth,” a crowd-pleasing performance made even more so by our mangling all instances of the “s” and “r” sounds in the song and strategically placing a wad of Black Jack chewing gum to simulate missing teeth. As best I can recall, that was the last time I was ever asked to announce a Christmas wish in a public forum – until now.
My school choice wish is simple: a level playing field.
It’s no longer a secret that charter schools are taking a toll on private schools. The evidence is overwhelming. A study by Abraham Lackman, published earlier this year in the Albany Government Law Review, estimates about one-third of students in charter schools in New York State come from Catholic schools. The results have been a slew of Catholic school closings, a drain on government budgets, and an enormous cost to taxpayers.
At the national level, a report last year from the Cato Institute estimates that at the elementary school level in highly urban districts, about 32 percent of charter students come from private schools.
Religious and independent schools are accomplishing here and now what everyone wants: low drop-out rates, high college-going rates, above-average student performance. It makes no sense whatsoever to let these schools fade away. Their closings represent an astounding loss of opportunity for families and children.
Understandably, the private school community has mixed emotions about charter schools. Charters advance school choice, enabling some parents to make a better match between the needs of their children and the offerings of a school. And, after all, a pillar of private education is the protection of a parent’s right to choose a child’s school.
But another pillar is the preservation of pluralism in education, which ensures a variety of truly distinctive schools from which parents can make that match, including faith-based schools, which offer a dimension of education unavailable in any public school. (more…)
This week, we posed that question to many of you on Twitter and got an amazing response: more than 1,000 tweets!
In the meantime, we also posed it to some stalwarts in the school choice movement, and asked them to write a short blog post in response. Next week, we’ll begin publishing their fun, thoughtful and provocative answers.
Here’s the all-star line-up:
Monday, Dec. 23: Jon Hage, founder and CEO of Charter Schools USA.
Tuesday, Dec. 24: Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.
Thursday, Dec. 26: Joe McTighe, executive director of the Council for American Private Education
Friday, Dec. 27: Dr. Howard Fuller, board chair, Black Alliance for Educational Options
Monday, Dec. 30: Julio Fuentes, president and CEO, Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options
Tuesday, Dec. 31: Peter Hanley, executive director, American Center for School Choice
We hope you enjoy the posts as much as the #schoolchoiceWISH event. It was a hit! (more…)
Jeynes
For many school choice supporters, enrollment growth across many sectors is reason to cheer. But new research may give policymakers pause about whether they're pursuing the options that result in the best academic outcomes.
William Jeynes, a professor at California State University, Long Beach, and a senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute, found students in religious schools were, on average, a full year ahead of their peers in traditional public and charter schools. After controlling for parental involvement, income, race and gender, the students were, on average, seven months ahead.
The findings, recently published in the Peabody Journal of Education, were based on a first-of-its-kind meta-analysis of 90 studies that compared academic performance across the three sectors. Jeynes also found:
The implications for school choice, he said, are obvious. (more…)
