A number of states including Florida are contemplating changes that would hold institutions training and certifying new teachers more accountable for the quality and performance of their graduates, NPR’s State Impact blog reports.

The renewed concern about training teachers who can cope with the challenges of educating students in coming decades comes as a growing number of baby-boomer-generation instructors are preparing to retire.

Conventional wisdom holds that many, if not most, education schools are doing a poor job at training teachers; after all, they have a history of taking in some of the lowest performing students, and student achievement in the United States has stagnated. Nationally, education schools have been criticized for being far too easy and, as a result, pumping ill-equipped teachers into the system and harming student achievement. Schools across the country are trying to mitigate the criticism by changing curriculum or increasing the amount of field experience teachers receive.

Lawmakers and regulators who hope to bring more uniformity to the student-to-teacher pathway have a challenge ahead of them. The variety of teacher-training programs in existence is bewildering. At the moment, those who aspire to lead a classroom can choose from an undergraduate degree, graduate programs, or stand-alone certification courses that are offered in a traditional environment — or even online. Yet, which one of these provides the best preparation is a question without a real answer.

According to Arthur Levine, who heads up the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Program that seeks to aid those switching to teaching as a second career, there is no consensus regarding exactly the type of preparation that is vital for classroom success.

At the moment, the most common approach taken by aspiring teachers is to enroll in undergraduate programs in colleges of education. Levine is just one of many critics who feel that these schools are to blame for the majority of ills afflicting the profession of teaching. Their chief shortcoming, according to Levine, is lack of focus on content. Instead of graduating science teachers or English teachers, these programs are turning out jacks-of-all-trades not fully equipped to specialize in any one particular subject, and generally underprepared to teach anything at all.

The very idea of an “education degree” may be an antiquated concept, says Timothy Knowles, director of the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute. He argues that there is little evidence to show that traditional programs’ focus on pedagogy—including classes on child development and how students learn—helps new teachers succeed in the classroom.

“Maybe we should ask some deeper more existential questions about the value of teacher education as it is constructed,” he said.

The post Calls for Changes to Teacher Training Programs Grow Louder appeared first on Education News.

The relationship between K12 Inc and the state of Maine could end before it begins thanks to the recently released findings of an investigation into the company by the state of Florida. K12 is seeking the license to operate a full-time virtual charter school in Maine – and some expect its pitch to come to nothing after the Florida report that shows the company employing teachers who were not properly licensed in the subjects they taught.

The draft report which was made public by the Florida Department of Education’s Inspector General this week claims that the company assigned at least three teachers to classrooms even though the instructors lacked the state-mandated qualifications during the 2010-11 academic year.

In addition, the company provided inaccurate student rosters to officials in Seminole County school district. The complaints lodged by Seminole were instrumental in kicking off the initial investigation.

K12, the nation’s largest online education company, and the school district each criticized the draft report in letters sent to the inspector general, who may still make changes before releasing the final report. Seminole County Public Schools expressed concern that investigators had limited the investigation to the 2010-11 school year and to Seminole County. “If a statewide provider was utilizing a certain staffing practice, it is reasonable to expect that evidence of that practice may be found in other counties where that provider operates,” the school board’s response asserts.

The board also disagreed with the conclusion that there was no evidence of uncertified teachers being used, naming three teachers as alleged examples to the contrary.

In a statement, K12 took issue with Seminole officials taking their concerns directly to the Florida Board of Education instead of with the vendor. According to the statement by the company, doing so could have saved both the company and the state a lot of money and time by avoiding the subsequent investigation.

The Florida investigation unfolded after Seminole County Public Schools obtained internal K12 Inc. emails that suggested the company was using improperly qualified teachers.

In one email from February 2011, a K12 manager, Samantha Gilormini, asked certified teachers to file paperwork claiming they taught students they may never have had contact with. “So if you see your name next to a student that might not be yours it’s because you were qualified to teach that subject and we needed to put your name there,” Gilormini wrote. One teacher, Amy Capelle, balked at signing the form and pointed out that only seven of the 112 students listed on her form were actually hers. She alleged that a supervisor later signed the form on her behalf and without her knowledge.

The Inspector General’s Office report also quotes a number of former teachers who refused to sign off on student rosters filled with names of students that they have never taught.

The post K12 Inc Florida Investigation Might Kill Maine Deal appeared first on Education News.

Special education is peppering the news this week as NPR’s State Impact blog reports on an effort under way in Tallahassee, Florida that would give parents more control over their children’s special education plan. Meanwhile in New Jersey, parents of special education students are protesting proposed changes in regulations that govern how special education services are delivered to students that depend on them.

The New Jersey regulations are being revised at the behest of Governor Chris Christie, who has said that the overhaul of special ed rules is one of the priorities of his administration. Among the proposed changes is one that has raised the hackles of parents of kids with special needs; while previously each child was assigned a Case Manager who had to be member of the school district child study team – which is made up of a school psychologist, school social worker and learning consultant – the changes would allow that role to be filled by a special ed teacher or a school counselor.

Parents are complaining that Christie is sacrificing quality of care delivered to students for financial reasons. According to the New Jersey Newsroom, if the proposed changes are adopted, district could achieve some savings because fewer child study team members need to be hired and retained.

Parents also complain that they were excluded from the process of re-designing the State Code and there was a lack of transparency in the process. The Statewide Parent Advocacy Network (SPAN) has asked the State Board of Education to “slow down the process” in which radical changes have been proposed. The State’s proposal would also allow school districts more time to engage in the diagnostic process of determining if the child is eligible for special education and related services. According to the proposed changes, the process could take six months or longer. Given that the school year is only ten months, parents contend that valuable time would be lost in the process, which could be detrimental to a child’s development.

The proposal currently in front of the lawmakers in Florida, on the other hand, has been generally welcomed by parents because it gives them the final say over the decisions made about their children’s education. Although district officials could still propose that a child be moved from special education to regular track and back, the ultimate say-so would lie with the parents. If school district officials disagree, they will need do go through the courts to impose their decision.

Ann Siegel with the advocacy group Disability Rights Florida says these kids are more capable than people think.

“I think they’re kind of forgetting what the special part in special education was,” Siegel said, “and that is to provide that specially designed instruction to meet the unique needs of the students so the students can achieve to the same extent as their non-disabled peers.”

Siegel’s group has represented many students who she says were inappropriately moved to a special diploma track.

The post Florida, New Jersey Parents React to Special Education Changes appeared first on Education News.

Florida Governor Rick Scott’s attempt to get legislators on board with his plan to give teachers in the state $2,500 in pay raises didn’t bear fruit, Yahoo News reports. Despite Scott’s insistence that lawmakers “will do the right thing” when it came to the raises, leaders of the state Legislature were equally insistent that they weren’t planning to endorse Scott’s proposals.

Although over the weekend, the House and Senate representatives negotiating over the budget agreed to set aside nearly $480 million specifically for teacher pay raises, that money will be at least in part tied to the outcomes of the teacher assessment system rather than as an across-the-board hike. This also means that the raises are unlikely to be the whole $2,500 Scott has asked for.

Scott had made the across-the-board teacher pay raise one of his top priorities for the 2013 session. But legislators had signaled their reluctance with the proposal from the start. They maintained that it went against the idea of rewarding teachers based on student performance — a key element of the merit pay law passed in 2011 and is scheduled to take effect in 2014. Sen. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton and chairman of the Senate panel that oversees school spending, brushed aside concerns that school districts may not be able to quickly implement a system to parcel out the $480 million by this fall.

According to Galvano, the decision made by lawmakers was consistent with the legislators’ long-expressed intent to move teacher pay to a more merit-based system. He added that the change should not come as a surprise to either the districts or Scott.

Scott, however, isn’t backing down – at least not according to his spokesperson Melissa Sellers. To the press, Sellers said that the governor hoped that this particular budget decision is reconsidered, warning that not doing so could result in a battle between Scott and the Legislature over the budget.

Sellers reiterated that the teacher pay is one of Scott’s top priorities and added that the governor wasn’t prepared to let it go.

Legislators have until May 3 to wrap up work on a new $74 billion state budget that would cover state spending from July 1 until June 30, 2014. This is the first time in several years legislators have had a budget surplus to work with. And over the weekend they made progress on dozens of spending items — including sprinkling aside money all through the budget for projects ranging from $50 million for a new statewide multi-use trail to money to renovate historic lighthouse and courthouses. But several sticking items remain, including whether to raise tuition rates for Florida’s college and university students.

The post Florida Legislators Reject Scott’s Teacher Pay Raise Proposal appeared first on Education News.

Florida teachers unions have filed a lawsuit in Gainesville opposing a new assessment system adopted by the state that would tie their evaluation to student standardized test scores. According to the lawsuit, the law that sets out a new teacher merit pay system would result in thousands of teachers being assessed based on test results in subjects they do not even teach.

According to the plaintiffs, the system as proposed violated the equal protection and due process clauses of the United States Constitution.

Seven teachers in Alachua, Escambia and Hernando county school districts are the plaintiffs, along with their local teacher unions. The education commissioner, the State Board of Education and the Alachua, Escambia and Hernando school boards are the defendants.

“This lawsuit highlights the absurdity of the evaluation system that has come about as a result of SB 736,” said Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association, in a statement.

Senate Bill 736 was the merit-pay legislation the Florida Legislature adopted in 2011, overhauling how teachers are evaluated, promoted and paid.

One of the plaintiffs, Kim Cook, was named the teacher of the year at W.W. Irby Elementary School in Alachua, which teaches kids from pre-K to second grade. Even so, her evaluation was largely based on the test results of fourth- and fifth-graders at nearby Alachua Elementary — and because the results of their exams showed less-than-expected growth, Cook’s rating dropped to “unsatisfactory.”

Bethann Brooks, another plaintiff, has a similar story. She teaches health science to older kids at Central High School in Brooksville, and her evaluation was based on test scores by students in 9th and 10th grades.

” I don’t teach most of those students,” she said a telephone call with reporters. “And those I do teach are enrolled in my health–science-related classes.” The union wants implementation of the law halted, teachers’ evaluations from the 2011-12 school year set aside and then the evaluation system revamped. Its lawsuit is backed by the National Education Association, as well. The lawsuit does not seek monetary damages. “This is not a suit about money,” said Ron Meyer, the union’s attorney. “This is a suit about doing what’s right.”

Education Commissioner Tony Bennett said in a statement he supports the law.  But he also said he backs legislative efforts to make sure teachers are not subject to it until an “appropriate assessment for their students and subjects is in place.”

The post Teachers Unions Sue Over Florida Assessment System appeared first on Education News.

The promise of technology in education has not been fulfilled — at least not in schools like Seminole Ridge High School, according to The Palm Beach Post. When the district spent millions to equip its schools’ labs with 25,000 new computers, little did the administrators or students expect that most of that machine time was going to be taken up by nothing else but testing.

Further complicating the issue is the fact that their current technology stock might not even be enough. A recent delivery of 400 new laptops eased the crunch slightly, but students and teachers who were hoping to put these digital tools to work in innovative ways to improve the educational experienceare left disappointed as all the resources go towards one goal only: computerized standardized testing.

School districts across Florida are scrambling to upgrade and add technology ahead of a big shift in state-required testing in the 2014-2015 school year that will move even more exams online.

In Palm Beach County, that means adding 25,000 computers — a jump of more than 30 percent — and bandwidth and wireless upgrades at its schools to prepare.

Still, “in the schools, instruction is suffering because computers are so tied up with assessments, and we have so many assessments that classroom teachers can’t get their kids on the computers for instruction,” said Gary Weidenhamer, the district’s director of educational technology.

The computer shortage comes from a number of new initiatives introduced by Weidenhamer, among them a complete transition to computerized testing for the new standardized test set to take over as a replacement for the FCAT.

Florida isn’t the only state that’s having difficulties coping with the new computerized testing requirement without substantial additional investment in computer hardware and software.

A number of states have announced that they will be looking for an alternative to the venerable General Education Diploma high school equivalency exam because they are not able to accommodate or afford its new computerized tests.

They’re worried that they don’t have the infrastructure to administer the new version that will rely heavily on technology rather than pen and paper. The states have the final say on which tests are used to determine high school equivalency, and most have been relying on the General Education Development Exam since it was first designed right after WWII.

At least two companies specializing in test design have lobbied more than 40 states to encourage them to drop the new GED in favor of an exam that isn’t so technology resource intensive.

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Two bills currently moving through Florida’s Republican-dominated House and Senate could see the state — which is already leading the nation when it comes to online learning – embrace the format even more fully. The first measure would allow out-of-state online education providers to qualify for state funding, while the other would see a virtual campus added to the state’s public education system.

Wesley Chapel’s Will Weatherford, the House Speaker, has previously said that an expansion of online education in the state has been on his agenda for a while. He sees online education as yet another stepping stone to a digital society fulfilling the technological promise of the 21st century, and he is doubly-proud of the fact that Florida has taken up the banner of progress and has taken it further than any other part of the country.

But opponents, including teachers’ unions and parent groups, have raised questions about the effectiveness of virtual education programs. They believe the proposed legislation is a move to further privatize education by allowing for-profit digital learning companies to compete for coveted state education dollars.

“I don’t think this is about embracing technology,” said Rep. Irv Slosberg, a Boca Raton Democrat. “I think this is about embracing money. … It’s not going to benefit our children. It’s probably going to benefit for-profit companies and out-of-state schemers.”

Online education came to Florida in a big way with the launch ten years ago of Florida Virtual School, a public school accessible to all Florida students and offering more than 120 online courses. At least 130,000 students are currently enrolled in FVS either part- or full-time, but any districts that feel that the mass online academy isn’t enough of an option can also contract with third parties to offer classes FVS doesn’t – although such partnerships are not funded directly by the state.

The growth of online learning in the state has also led to online education providers playing a bigger role in the state’s elective politics. Companies involved with digital learning and related fields have recently begun throwing more money at office candidates and their political action committees, according to finance disclosure forms mandated by Florida law.

Nor has the expansion come entirely without controversy. At least one provider, K2 Inc., was recently subject to an investigation by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting due to the fact that the company wasn’t using properly certified teachers in its online schools, contrary to the agreement it made with the state and the local districts.

There also remain questions about the effectiveness of of online learning as test results comparing online learners and traditional students don’t show anything definitive as of yet.

Still, Republican lawmakers say they favor expansion because more digital programs mean more choices for students.
The first digital learning proposal passed in the House, 82-37, on Thursday. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Manny Diaz Jr., R-Hialeah, would enable students to take classes offered at virtual schools based in other counties. It would also allow out-of-state digital learning companies to receive a larger share of state funding than in the past.

The post Bill to Expand Florida Online Education Moves Through Legislature appeared first on Education News.

Considering his reformist credentials, Tony Bennett – Florida’s new Education Commissioner – should be the last person to criticize a measure like the parent trigger law current making its way through the state legislature. However, earlier this week Bennett came out strongly against the proposal, although not because he feels it empowers parents too much. On the contrary, he thinks that the process would introduce too much red tape and would make the state too involved in any efforts by parents to turn around a failing school.

According to the letter Bennett sent to lawmakers, the bill doesn’t provide for any kind of remedy against school board members who obstruct parent efforts to put the trigger law into practice. He said that by putting itself in a position of an arbiter between the feuding parent groups and local school boards, it allows the board members to punt the issue further up the legislative chain.

In response, Carlos Trujillo, the bill’s sponsor, said that the conditions of Florida’s NCLB waiver granted by the federal government last year meant the ultimate decision on school turnaround must lie with the state board of education, not the local school district.

The day after Bennett sent his memo, a House committee approved the measure along party lines with representatives of Bush’s foundation speaking in favor. The bills before the Florida House and Senate (HB 867, SB 862) would let parents tell school boards how to handle failing schools if 51 percent of parents sign a petition. Critics argue the petition-gathering process is rife for fraud and other problems. The issue was at the heart of a dispute last year over a California school, the first in the nation to use the parent trigger.

The bill requires local school boards to inform parents within 30 days if the state board deems the school a target for a turnaround. Parents will also be given notice of when the school board will hold a meeting on the issue and announce the 30-day grace period when parents can start gathering signatures and putting together a list of options.

The options, identical to those already available to school boards implementing turnaround plans, include closing the school, converting it into a charter, hiring a management firm to take over the school, or a mix. But Bennett wrote that the proposal “seems to require an overly burdensome process for parents to navigate when working to improve their child’s school.” Instead, he wrote, local school board officials should be held responsible if they ignore parents’ wishes.

The post Bennett Warns Against Florida’s Parent Trigger Proposal appeared first on Education News.

According to data collected by the Florida Department of Education, charter schools in the state are outperforming their traditional public school peers. The report – titled Student Achievement in Florida’s Charter Schools: A Comparisons of the Performance of Charter School Students with Traditional Public School Students — found that of the 63 metrics measured by state exams, charter students outdid their public school classmates on 55.

Moreover, charter schools have managed to narrow both racial and income gap between their students, something that the state’s education system has been struggling with. The report was put together based on scores from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests and Algebra End-of-Course Exams from the 2011-2012 academic year.

Tiffany Cowie, a public information officer for DOE, said the report isn’t a criticism of traditional public schools. Charter schools are funded through DOE and are held to the same standards as traditional public schools, despite being independently operated, Cowie said.

Cowie expressed pride at the achievement of the charters, saying that both kinds of schools are public schools as considered by the state. However, he was at a loss to explain what reason there could be for such gap in performance between charters and traditional public schools. Cowie said that contrary to the assertion that charters get to cherry-pick their students, the reality is that charters and traditional schools pull their student bodies from identical student pools.

Over the period covered by the exam, 518 charter schools had been operating in the state sponsored by 43 school districts and two state universities. More than 180,000 students in grades K-12 are now enrolled in charter schools comprising more than 7% of total students in the state.

The learning gains section of the report includes 96 comparisons. The report compares the percentage of students in charter schools making learning gains against the percentage of students in traditional public schools making learning gains, by subject, grade level, and subgroup. The percentage of students making learning gains was higher in charter schools in 83 of the 96 comparisons. The percentage of students making learning gains was higher in traditional public schools in 6 of the 96 comparisons. There was no difference in the percentage of students making learning gains in 7 of the 96 comparisons.

According to the report, the findings are definitive in showing that charter schools present a viable educational alternative for families who felt that they have been failed by their local public schools. The Florida study isn’t the first of the kind to find performance gains in charters. A recent report by the Center for Research of Education Outcomes in Stanford University published similar findings on Massachusetts charter schools earlier this month.

The CREDO study showed that students in MA charters gain, on average, 1.5 to 2.5 months of additional learning over their public school peers, with the results being especially marked in Boston schools. Massachusetts, where 13% of students are enrolled in charter schools, is along with Florida considered a pioneer in both opening the doors to school choice and making it a success for its students.  

The Massachusetts study is especially notable because included data from over 25,000 students who were followed for over 5 years.

The researchers broke apart Boston numbers because the findings there were impressive even on the scale of other charters in the state. While an average charter school student gained about 2 months of learning in math and reading over the course of a year, an average Boston charter school student gained an additional year of schooling over the same period of time.

The post Florida Charter Schools Outperform Public Schools, Data Shows appeared first on Education News.

The sheer volume that kids need to learn these days made some schools feel that gym class might be a time they can no longer afford to lose to academics. But in one school, they are trying a different solution: learning while you exercise. That is the approach currently being tried at the Everglades Elementary School in West Palm Beach, Florida.

As Sharon Patelsky – the teacher who leads the unorthodox gym class – explains, she is a teacher first. That means all physical exercises, from stretching to running, are accompanied by vocabulary recitations, counting and and arithmetic.

Not that the radical new approach is universally popular. Both parents and education experts said that cramming this kind of learning into physical education classes takes away the only time the students have to relax and forget academics during the whole school day. Research coming out in the past few years has shown that allowing students breaks during the day, in the form of PE or recess, actually aids learning – with the positive outweighing any time lost to academics.

While generations of bookish but clumsy children who feared being the last pick for the dodge ball team may welcome the injection of math and reading into gym class, the push is also motivated by a simple fight for survival by physical education departments. As budget cuts force school officials to make choices between subjects, “it’s just a way to make P.E. teachers more of an asset to schools and seem as important” as teachers in core subjects like language arts, math and science, said Eric Stern, the administrator in charge of physical education for the Palm Beach County schools, the country’s 11th-largest school district. “We are taking away the typical stereotype of what P.E. used to be like.”

Everglades isn’t the only school in the country to bow to the reality that without adjustments, PE could be on its way out entirely. In Deep Creek Elementary School, in Virginia, students get practice in foreign languages while they warm up, counting reps in French, or Spanish. And those schools that eschew hybrid gym classes, instead take the hint from other subjects and test on them instead. Tests administered in schools in the District of Columbia, for example, will now include 50 questions on physical fitness and human health.

With parents and students rebelling against what they see as an excess of homework, some say that gym class assignments add to the busywork. “I never really learned anything from doing those papers,” said Annie Beyer-Chafets, 16, a sophomore in Westchester County, N.Y., who recalls being asked to write an essay about a relative’s lifetime sport choices last year.

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