Education

The Florida Education Association and National Education Association filed a federal lawsuit today challenging the constitutionality of Florida’s teacher evaluation system.

The system was created under a law passed in 2011 known as Senate Bill 736.

Will Florida need a ‘Plan B’ test for new standards set to hit state schools in 2014? And if not, will school have the computers and bandwidth necessary for the online tests?

That’s just one item on tomorrow’s State Board of Education agenda.

As the spring semester winds down around the country, one teacher, Gerald Conti, is not going quietly.

Conti is retiring from Westhill High School in Syracuse, NY at the end of this school year and his resignation letter has become a manifesto for critics of the Common Core.

The State Board of Education will get an update next week on Florida’s next education standards, the Common Core State Standards.

The meeting will include information about the technology needed to implement the new assessments that are scheduled to begin in early 2015.

Education Commissioner Tony Bennett says he will have more information next week about plans for implementing new education standards known as Common Core.

The State Board of Education is meeting next week.

“We have rolled out a very aggressive implementation plan,” Bennett said. “We know that we have to be fully implemented and prepared to teach and assess these standards in 2014-15.”

Florida and 45 other states are transitioning to Common Core.

Patricia Levesque runs two foundations created by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — the Foundation for Florida’s Future and the Foundation for Excellence in Education.

A loose-knit network of education activists generally opposed to the direction Florida has been taking its schools recently is attempting to organize into a more potent political force.

The groups include parents, people who want more state funding for schools, and others who are fed up with the brand of testing-based school accountability that Florida has become famous for. Under the umbrella of the Alliance for Public Schools, they are hoping to bolster their fundraising capacity and step up their efforts to influence legislation at the statehouse.

More than half of Florida’s Hispanic and black students at state universities currently eligible for the state’s Bright Futures college scholarship would no longer qualify when new standards take effect on July 1, according to a University of South Florida analysis obtained by the Florida College Access Network.

By comparison, about 40 percent of white and Asian students at state universities would no longer be eligible for the scholarship.

Sara LaBarbera is teaching 6^th graders at Walker Middle School near Tampa how to research poets using an online library.

One student, working on a series of questions about a Lewis Carroll poem, asks LaBarbera for help. He has the pieces, but doesn’t quite know how to put them together.

LaBarbera knows how to ask the right questions.

“Alice seems, like, sad or depressed and the White Knight tries to cheer her up by singing her a song,” the student says of the poem.

“OK, so is it a poem that is telling you a story?” LaBarbera asks.

A business advocacy group is running television ads that say Florida might have to cut education funding if the state expands Medicaid health coverage.

The National Federation of Independent Business has also set up a website — FloridaCanDoBetter.com.

Supporters of the parent trigger bill held a briefing with reporters today near the Capitol.

The briefing was hosted by Patricia Levesque, executive director of the Foundation for Florida’s Future. The foundation was created by former Gov. Jeb Bush.