Au revoir to French?: A bill filed by State Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Parkland, would alter the requirements for Bright Futures scholarships from two years of a foreign language to two years of computer coding. Tallahassee Democrat.
School choice bills: Several school choice bills have been filed for the next legislative session. One, by State Rep. Chris Sprowls, R-Clearwater, would allow schools with openings to accept students from other counties. Gradebook.
Charter enrollment flattens: Wild growth in charter school enrollment in Duval County is tailing off. After years of double-digit percentage increases, growth is just 1.5 percent this year. Florida Times-Union.
School testing: Maryland is looking into the use of standardized testing and the company that provides most of it, NSC Pearson. It is a leading test company nationwide, though it has lost contracts with Florida and several other states. Maryland Reporter. The highest pass rates in Advanced Placement class exams by black Florida students are in French, art and psychology. Bridge to Tomorrow. (more…)
That the word “factories” is alliterative with “failure” probably explains why the Tampa Bay Times tied them together for a front-page Sunday education story that is drawing state and national attention. But it may unwittingly express part of what is going dramatically wrong with five public elementary schools in a predominantly black neighborhood in St. Petersburg, Fla.
No one disputes the path by which enrollment in these schools has shifted from an economically and racially diverse student body to one that is almost entirely poor and black. But the resegregation is only part of the tragedy here.
Those of us who fought the Pinellas County School Board’s decision to retreat from court-ordered desegregation now know that the racial quotas we supported were often masking a racial achievement gap within schools themselves. Indeed, the Times, with the benefit of state-required test data disaggregated by race, has previously reported that Pinellas black students score lower than black students in any of the state’s other big urban school districts – and that poverty alone isn’t to blame.
In other words, the struggles of these students in St. Petersburg did not begin with resegregation, though gathering all these students into five schools helped reveal a longstanding problem, and likely exacerbated it.
Having spent much of my professional career editorializing on Pinellas public schools and a good stretch of my adulthood volunteering in them to support my two daughters’ education, I hesitate to point fingers. After all, teaching children who are burdened by poverty at home is one of the greatest challenges public education faces. But the term “factory” may indeed hint at how these schools went off the rails.
Operationally speaking, Pinellas was running these schools in roughly the same manner as any of the district’s 68 traditional elementaries – in effect running Melrose Elementary like Bauder. At Melrose, more than 80 percent of the students are on free or reduced-price lunch and more than 90 percent are minorities. At Bauder, less than 30 percent qualify for the lunch program reduced lunch and 14 percent are minorities. Students at a school like Melrose may need emotional support, or additional time for reading instruction. Above all, though, they need to be surrounded by adults who can relate to them and recognize their potential. They need institutions that are tailored to their needs. (more…)
Charter schools. Two shuttered charter schools leave the Broward school district on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sun-Sentinel. A parent says she was almost barred from enrolling her child in an embattled charter school after she criticized it. Palm Beach Post. A Sun-Sentinel guest column praises lawmakers for considering new charter school regulations. WFSU looks at Florida charter school policies through the lens of Georgia's.
Special needs. A move to a new location with a state-of-the-art facility makes a charter school for students with autism harder for some families to reach. Palm Beach Post.
Back to School. Districts around the state start classes today. Palm Beach Post. Ocala Star-Banner. Bradenton Herald. A Catholic high school holds its first mass of the new year. Tampa Tribune. Police plan to visible during the first week of school. Palm Beach Post. Shoppers hit stores as a sales tax holiday comes to an end. Palm Beach Post. Miami Herald. Daytona Beach News-Journal. Teachers take advantage of a district supply closet. Florida Times-Union. Marion upgrades its tech. Ocala Star-Banner. Former kindergartners dispense advice. Florida Today.
Hiring. Central Florida districts bring on more teachers for the new year, as enrollment grows. Orlando Sentinel. Duval and other North Florida districts fill teaching slots. Florida Times-Union.
Philanthropy. The Hillsborough school district prepares for the end of its Gates Foundation grants. Tampa Tribune. The Elks donate money to a Brevard high school. Florida Today.
Testing. Some districts consider joining Seminole County's stand for national tests; others do not. Orlando Sentinel.
Facilities. City officials press the school board for action on neglected school repairs. South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Desegregation. The Tampa Bay Times editorializes on the historical roots of the academic neglect its reporters uncovered. WTSP hosts one of the reporters on air. Voucher supporters shouldn't claim they offer a solution for all children, a Times columnist writes.
The first installment of an in-depth Tampa Bay Times investigation of resegregated schools in Pinellas County, Fla. is worth reading in full. Near the end, you'll find a story of Loneiyce Washington, who felt she had no choice but to move to a neighboring town to find a safer school for her grandson.
She packed her things into a storage unit, left her house in south St. Petersburg and crammed with Tyree into her 27-year-old daughter’s apartment in Pinellas Park.
The new address meant she could enroll him at Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Elementary School. Almost immediately, she said, Tyree started doing better.
Though her living arrangement is tenuous, Washington said she’s glad to be away from south St. Petersburg schools.
The Times notes the legacy of racial segregation in the community, which undoubtedly plays a role in its present academic turmoil. But it also reveals how problems that trapped children like Tyree stem from policy changes made much more recently. The newspaper reports other families felt they were in a similar bind. Removing the barriers they face is no simple task.
Meanwhile... (more…)
Segregation. Pinellas County, Fla. creates unconscionable pockets of academic failure for black students. Tampa Bay Times. Here's what the school board members say.
School choice. Palm Beach adds 13 programs. Sun-Sentinel. Pasco's superintendent says the district plans to add new options. Gradebook.
Testing. Calls to let districts use national exams rekindle a testing debate. Tampa Bay Times. Schools are in a "holding pattern" while they await the results of a state testing study. Politico Florida.
Funding. The state House education appropriations chairman wants more equity between schools. Politico Florida.
Finance. Marion is hundreds of millions short on capital funding. Ocala Star-Banner. Broward officials defend their implementation of a construction bond. Sun-Sentinel.
Teachers unions. Orange County's ousted union leader is now attempting to lead the state organization. Orlando Sentinel.
Charter schools. Insurance requirements could cripple a Marion County military charter. Ocala Star-Banner. (more…)
Editor’s note: Doug Tuthill responds today to a post I wrote yesterday about the failure of school districts and teachers unions to enact meaningful differential pay plans for teachers – and how that’s indicative of a bigger failure to help low-income students.
Ron, you raised some excellent points in your blog post about the unwillingness of the Pinellas County, Fla. school district to provide each student with equal access to a quality education. For nine years, I received supplemental pay to work in a magnet program that served the district’s academic elite, and for 11 years I was a leader in the local teachers union, which was complicit in the district’s refusal to provide equal opportunity. So your criticisms stung, but they were accurate.
This may be self-serving, but I’m convinced the cause of this leadership failure is not bad people, but an organizational structure and culture that favors the politically strong over the politically weak.
Growing up in Pinellas, I attended segregated public schools. When the federal courts finally forced the school district to desegregate, the focus was on ratios and not learning. The district closed most of the black neighborhood schools and bused those children to schools in the white neighborhoods because busing white students into black neighborhoods was too politically difficult. But white flight meant some forced busing of white students was necessary, so the district created a rotation system that bused low-income/working class white students every two years to schools where the black population approached 30 percent. (The court order said no Pinellas school could be more than 30 percent black.)
While working-class white neighborhoods lacked the political clout to prevent their children from being bused every two years, their protests were loud enough to force the school board to look for alternatives. In the early 1980s, the district started creating magnet programs to entice white families to voluntarily attend schools that were in danger of exceeding the 30 percent threshold.
These magnet programs were designed to provide white students with a superior education. Class sizes were small, textbook and materials budgets seemed unlimited, professional development opportunities were extraordinary and special pay supplements to attract the best teachers were impressive. In my case, when I quit my job as a college professor to teach in the International Baccalaureate (IB) at St. Petersburg High School (SPHS), my annual salary increased 28 percent.
The magnet strategy worked - especially the IB program. Affluent white families began voluntarily busing their children to attend our program, and in many cases students got on buses at 5 a.m. and rode over 50 miles per day to attend.
Unfortunately, desegregation via magnet schools increased the resource inequities that desegregation was suppose to reduce. (more…)
